REPORT 



ON 



EDUCATION. 



BY 



e; SEGITIN", 

UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER ON EDUCATION AT THE 
VIENNA UNIVERSAL EXHIBITION. 



SECOND EDITION, 

(authorized and revised by the author.) 



/^ 



^^^■c 



" c^ 







MILWAUKEE, WIS. 

DOKRFLINGER BoOK & PUBLISHINr, Co. 

1880. 






^ <. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by 

E. SEGUIN, 

In the officti of the Librarian of Congress, in Washington. 

(All rights of translation and reproduction reserved.) 



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O 



O 



IxNFANT-EDUCATION. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Cradle and the Creche. 

The Nursery ; Young Mother'' s first Manual; Lessons from Experience; 
Pre-education ; Form of the Cradle; Enlargement; Uses; Ornamenta- 
tion; Effects; Necessiig of the Cr'l'che; Nursing, a Progressive Art. 

"Considerons I'espece huraaine comme un individu 
que la duree infinie de son existence permet de 
rapprocher sans cesse d'un type parfait, dont son 
etat prmiitif ne donnait meine pas I'idee." — 

Cahanis. 

I. Introduction. An inquiry into the conditions of popular 
education in several countries can only serve to furnish the elements 
of comparison between what is done at home a.nd what is done 
abroad, in view of improving home education. In this light, the 
writer looked at the school-collections exhibited in Vienna, but soon 
perceived that the most imp6rtant data were missing, — some not being 
susceptible of transportation or of representation by specimens, others 
having been mtentionally withdrawn. Withdrawn ! why ? 

To educate children for themselves is rare in Europe, and it is 
considered rather Quixotic. The youth of the people are merchant- 
able commodities, soon to be credited to the party which puts its 
stamp upon them. Therefore, where they are worth having, they are 
picked up as eagerly as nuggets. Priests pretend to teach them to 
think, only to impose upon them a belief which implies obedience to 
their craft; Kaisers claim their direction, not to elevate them, but to 
put them among their droves of subjects; bourgeois and manufactu- 
rers give them a minimum of instruction, just sufficient to insure 
their working dependence, and to qualify their own sons to be fed at 
the public expense; while the workingmen themselves — demoralized 
by such examples — put their apprentices at menial employment, and 
cheat them out of their rightful professional training. 



For these and other causes, the Section of Education of the 
Vienna exhibition was so incomplete as to seem to preclude, at first 
sight, the idea of making any report upon it. But, considering that 
completeness is not the sifie qua non of human eftorts, the writer 
thought of gathering, in and out of the Welt-:iusstellung , as 
many facts as circumstances would permit, and of forming from them 
a judgment, which subsequent observers could complete, confin-n, or 
reject. 

From this stand-point, v/e consider European children as in four 
groups : those who receive no education ; those who do not receive 
the education they need; those who receive an education vv^iich dis- 
qualifies them for work; and those whose education prepares them for 
work. From another point of view, we saw that the European 
children enter the school younger, are trained longer, and are ad- 
vanced farther than the Americans. As a consequence of this last 
contrast, we shall have less to say about the primary and grammar 
schools, and more about the infantile and the professional. We will 
leave the other consequences to issue naturally from observation. 

Since singularly strenuous and successful efforts have been made 
to overcome the apparently impassable barriers which separate from 
the world some afflicted children, namely, the deaf-mutes and the 
idiots, we will append an account, somewhat historical, but mainly 
philosophical, of these methods, in the belief that, being positive, they 
can be applied to ordinary children. Ha\'ing no room for an intro- 
duction, we would refer to the History of Education, by Philo- 
biblius, (Dr. L. P. Brockett,) as the best substitute for it, 

2. The Cradle. At the Vienna Exposition [Wiener Welt- 
Slusstellung) there was a "PaviUou ch V Enfanf^ room replete 
with the necessaries of the nursery — and, also with its superfluities — 
intended altogether to represent the unbounded v»ishes of a mother 
for her baby's comfort and happiness. ' This palace of luxurious 
nursing ought to have ben furnished with a little manual ol what is 
necessary to protect and to prepare life before nati\ity. 

During this first period, the ieelings come mainly through reflex 
impressions from the mother — a process which not only lays the 
foundation of health and vitality, but which forms the deeper strata 
of the moral dispositions and of the so-called innate ideas. The 
managers of the world "from behind the screens" know this; for it 
is the time at which they impose on plebeian women pilgrimages and 
ecstatic neuvailies, and keep those of a higher class under more 
stringent impressions. Here in Vienna, for instance, from the times 
of the Emperor Charles V. till quite recently, when an heir to the 
throne was expected, the Empress was given in charge of a special 
director, who would regulate all her actions and surroundings, in 
view of commencing the course of submissive education of the con- 
tingent monarch, as early as the first evolution from the yolk-sub- 



stance of the human egg, during embryogenesis. Similar influence 
is now claimed for an object diametrically opposed to the degenere- 
scence thus arrived at in the house of Hapsburg. It can be attained 
by advice, printed either in book-form, or on scrolls, as are the sent- 
ences of the Koran. But Avhatever may be the form given to this 
magna cTiarta of the rights of the unborn, let it be found precisely 
where these rights ought to be kept most sacred, in the nursery ; 
where their enforcement wouldfprotect the mother and elevate her 
function, at the same time that it would insure her fruit against the 
decay resulting from wrong pre-natal impressions. 

We know that a cold contact with the mother makes the foetus 
fly to the antipode of its narrow berth; that a rude shock may destroy 
it, or originate life-long infirmities; that fear to the mother is terror or 
fits within; that harsh words vibrate as sensibly in the liquor of the 
amnion as in the fluid of the labyrinth of the ear. For instance, 
when a mother has lulled her home sorrows with strains of soothing 
music, her child, too often an idiot, shows wonderful musical procliv- 
ities floating through the wreck of his mind. 

Pre-natal impressions need not be of a depressing order to leave 
their mark. Elation of feelings or high aspirations may too impress 
the foetus morbidly, as well as otherwise. Example : A couple of 
artists marry under the most exalted feelings of their art. Their first 
daughter, now oet 12, is a dreamy thing, with a brilliant but vague eye. 
Her ordinary movement is of brushing up and away, as in the act of 
smoothing the tones of an oil painting; in her hands, searching for 
delicate contrasts, and unable of muscular exertion, her idiocy seems 
to be concentrated. In the process of development of this artist-couple 
music became the ideal, and their second daughter is extraordinarily 
gifted in it; otherwise an ordinary child. — Later, the same elation 
of art-feeling soaring in a larger horizon, the third daughter is an 
exponent of the philosophy that all art culminates in the elevation 
of man himself. She, only 4 years old, intuitively prepares her own 
personations of excellence in artistically studied attitudes, after hav- 
ing arranged, on and around herself, the luxuries of the house most 
befitting her part; an ordinary child, too, in other respects. 

The impression, resented by the mother, may be transmitted to 
her infant, and die away or not, when he is weaned. Example : 

Madam R , now of i ith street, New York, being alone 

with her sick husband in a country-house, saw, at night, somebody, 
wrapped in a sheet, trying to force an entrance. She, unarmed and 
unaided, cried out, pushed and piled heavy furniture against the 
door, and succeeded in repulsing the intruder. She soon after gave 
birth to a healthy male child, but who, at the hour at which this 
struggle had taken place, would scream as if in terror. At all other 
times he was good-humored, but no medical treatment could prevent 
him fromi awakening and screaming at that precise hour. This 



habit disappeared, when he was taken from the breast of his moth- 
ther. Become a man, he has shown endurance and bravery. 

The impressions of the mother can be communicated to 
her child, since they leave their imprints on our much more 
hardened tissues and features when grown up. When twins 
come from different sacs, they are often unlike ; when from 
the same sac, they almost mvariably resemble each other. 
As a proof that this resemblance is mainly due to the identity of 
their pre-natal impressions,let us follow this further, as in the example 

of the brothers E Born with characteristics almost identical, 

brought up under the same tuition and habits, in the college St. 
Louis, they continued to look so much alike, that greeting or punish- 
ment would often meet the one instead of the other. One entered 
the atelier of De Laroche; the other went into some moneyed busi- 
ness. New impressions modified their features: one grew sensitive, 
the other rich; and their likeness disappeared in a corresponding 
ratio, until, when seen last, they hardly looked like thirtieth cousins. 

Physicians will testify, that, when our hands receive a new- 
comer, we read quite plainly upon his featurs on what sort of feelings 
he was bred by that intra-uterine education whose imprints trace the 
channel of future sympathies and abilities. Therefore, if it is noble 
work to educate or to cure the insane, the idiot, the hemiplegic, the 
epileptic, and the choreic; how much higher is the work of prevent- 
ing these degeneracies in the incipient being by averting those com- 
motions which storm him in the holy region intended for a terrestrial 
paradise during the period of evolution ! To teach Him reverence 
toward the bearer of his lace, to instruct Her in the sacredness of 
bland and serene feelings during the God-like creative process^ is 
educating two generations at once. This is the highest education 
of the nursery. 

From this, the true cradle of mankind, let us look at that made 
for the baby. There was no end of them in the Pavilion de 
V Enfant; and we may 'find more philosophy in them than the 
upholsterer intended. Therein the infant will at first but continue 
his ovum-life; and for this the cradle must be fitted. Let us see. 
The head is bent, the extremities are drawn up, and the body shaped 
like a crescent. This attitude gives to the muscles the greatest relax- 
ation, and to the cartilages, which cap the bones, the position most 
favorable to nutrition and growth. Generally, the baby rests on the 
right side, to free from pressure and to facilitate the movements of the 
heart. In this mode of reclining, the left hemi-cerebrum will con- 
tain more blood than the right, which is compressed by the pillow. 
Attitudes, concordant \\'ith the sleepy habits of the first months and 
the activity of the minddurin g this long sleepiness, indicate the future 
preponderance of the mental operations of the left over the right 
side of the brain, the approaching superior nutrition and dexterity 



of the right over the left hand, and even the later causation of more 
frequent paralysis on the left. For the present, and for some time 
yet, baby \\ill live mainly in his sleep; during which, more than when 
awake, he will be seen angry, smiling, or thinking, in the shape of 
well-defined dreams. 

How important it is, then, that the cradle be formed in accord- 
ance with these natural indications ! A transitory abode between 
the pelvis and the bed; a warm, soft, yet supporting recipient, ampler 
than the former, better defined in its shape than the latter, with 
curves less short than circles and more varied than ovals. A perfect 
egg, vertically split, would make two such cradles, or nests, suited 
either for child or bird. 

But as soon as the nursling awakes to the world, and wants to 
be introduced to everything, his couch must be enlarged and enliv- 
ened, and must look more and more like a school and play-room. 
Otherwise, it becomes a prison, whence, Tantalus-like, he looks at 
his surroundings. Here is his first lesson of practical sociability. To 
see and not be able to reach, to perceive images with no possibility 
of seizing the objects, renders him impatient, fretful, or unconcerned, 
and opens an era of exaction upon others, or of diffidence of himself, 
or of indifference tor any attainment, which unavoidably ends in 
immorality or incapacity, or in both. Viewed from this stand-point, 
these cradles, so varied, so elegant, so easy to keep clean and to 
carry from the light of the window by day to the recess of the al- 
cove at night — the best being of French and Austrian manufacture — 
are yet very imperfect in their bearing on education. Let us mark 
some of their short-comings. 

Little ones have an instinctive horror of isolation. Whoever 
studies them knows that, when they awake, they look, not, at first, 
with staring eyes, but with searching hands; they seek not for sights, 
but for contacts. This love of contact, whence results the primary 
education of the most general sense, the touch, is ill-satisfied with 
the uniformity of the materials at hand, as exemplified at Vienna or 
Paris. (In November 1874 I saw a similar exhibition, a Pavilion 
de V Enfant, in the Champs Elysees, but it was no improvement 
on that of the Prater.) 

In this respect, the child of poor people fares better, having the 
opportunity of amusing himself for hours in experiencing the rude 
or soft, warm or cold contacts of his miscellaneous surroundmgs; 
whereas the hand of the offspring of the rich finds all around the 
sameness of smooth tissues, which awake in his mind no curiosity; 
he calls for some one to amuse him, gets first angry, then indiffer- 
ent, and does not improve his main and surest sense of knowledge, 
the touch. 

But soon other senses are awakened. Audition — of which 
hereafter — and vision, for the enjoyment of which the cradle be- 



comes a kind of theatre. For a mother must be very destitute or 
despondent, who does not try to enliven it with some bright things 
laid on or flapping above. One may benevolently smile at the 
extravagancies of colors and patterns intended to express this feel- 
ing, but will also find in them a serious warning. 

Physiologically viewed, this is a grave matter. The form of the 
cradle demands fitness; its ornamentation requires a more extended 
knowledge. When planning it, a mother must ren^ember that the 
fixity of the eye upon some object — particularly upon a bright one, 
and more so if that object is situated upward and sideways from the 
ordinary range of vision — and, through the eye, the fixedness of the 
mind while the body is in a state of repose, constitute a concurrence 
of conditions eminently favorable to the induction of hypnotism, and 
its terrible sequels, strabismus and convulsions, — of hypnotism, 
which, when unsuspected and not controlled is often mistaken for 
natural sleep. 

Psychologically viewed, the decoration of the cradle is of equal 
moment. To surround an infant with highly wrought or colored 
figures often grotesque, or at least untrue to nature, may, by day, 
attract more attention than his faculties of perception can safely 
bestow, hence fatigue of the brain or vv^orse, a resort to the solution 
presented the early teachers of supernaturalism; but it \viD, by night, 
evoke other than the perceptive and rational powers, for when 
the lights and shadows of dusk alter all the forms and deepen every 
color, the faculty of imprinting images being led astray, it photo- 
graphs distorted imprints, from confused, often moving, sometimes 
rustling, ornaments. It is then that the perception of the impossible, 
by the sight and hearing mainly, educates the senses to feed the 
mind on hallucinations, and prepares it to believe them instead of 
inquiring into their causes, till it comes to the fatal credo guia 
absurd am. The seeds of most of the insanities are sown at or 
before this time. 

These were the first impressions that forced themselves upon 
my mind in the Pavilion de V Enfant. PI ere is, in a few words, 
a resume of them : Paucity of the material upon which the inex- 
perienced yet inquisitive baby can exercise, with interest and profit, 
his sense of touch; profusion, bad taste, and dangerous disposition 
of the objects which speak to the eye, if not always with the inten- 
tion, at least with the almost uniform result, of giving wrong or dan-- 
gerous impressions. 

Attention was next called to what had been done, and to what 
had been left undone, for the cultivation or the satisfaction of the 
other senses of the infants. But here it was soon perceived that our 
inquiries went beyond the sphere of what was exhibited. Perfumes 
were there as an attenuation, and music as a distraction; nursery- 
arrangements intended rather for the mother's and nurse's comfort 



than for baby's improvement. We left this attractive place with 
another grief. 

3. The Creche.— This Facillon de V Enfant ought to have 
contained at least one model creche. 

Creche is the French name of the public nursery where work- 
ing-women leave their little ones in the morning, and whence they 
bring them home at night. The creche ! Horrid necessity ! Be- 
ginning of the communistic inclined plane upon which those, who 
pay and do not receive rents, slide with a fearful rapidity; yet a kind 
institution for those already fallen into the gulf. Since, therefore^ 
creches must be, the writer suffered from not seeing their latest 
improvement represented at the Vienna Welt-^USStelluna next 
to the appliances of the most luxurious nursing. There could have 
been tested the action of colors, of light, and its various attributes^ 
on the organ of vision; the influence of varied sounds, of harmonies 
and melodies on the virgin audition, the mind, and the sympathetic 
centres; the power of primary perceptions to awaken first ideas, to 
impel the determinations of the will, and to raise the various pas- 
sions; the effects of diet upon those passions; the effect of modifica- 
tion of food and digestion; the influence of rest and sleep on the 
body's temperature, on the pulse and respiration; the influence of 
the artificial, the moist, or the dry heat of the nursery on the too 
precocious development of the nervous centres; and, subsequently, 
on the prevalence of chronic or acute meningitis, diphtheria, and 
croup; besides many other problems whose solutions depend on the 
early study of phenomena, which can be found in the creche as 
surely as those of disease are found in hospitals. In this respect, let 
us bear in mind that the rich man can never flatter himself that he 
does a gratuitous charity, since from its poor recipient comes many 
times its worth in useful experience, directly benefiting the would-be 
benefactor. 

We do not overlook the fact that many mothers, particularly 
among those both educated and ft-uitful, pay the closest attention to 
these questions, and become expert therein, as they do in nursing 
their sick; but as they ^lack the means of record and transmission of 
their observations, thei experience dies, so to speak, with each gen- 
eration. Hence the nursing of babies continues to be a work of 
devotion, but does not become the co-ordinate and progressive art 
it ought to be in well-organized creches opened to criticism by 
public exhibitions. Thus in Vienna, at least, this opportunity was 
lost. 

The child, soon two years old, is up, sees, hears well enough, 
talks, though imperfectly, walks, though totteringly. Let us follow 
him where he can yet teach us something, in the Salle d! ^syle 
and in the Kindergarten. 



10 



Chapter 2. 
The Salle D'Asyle. 

Mothers as teachers; The salle d?asyle; Effect on the child; Plan; Curriculum; 
Remarks] Motives; Definition. 

4. Mothers as teachers. — There are mfant-schools of various 
grades, from the most ragged to the most select; the average of them 
are the Salle d\'^syle and the Kindergarten; both are intended 
for the child, when he is once on the war-path of curiosity. 

But cannot he learn from his mother, instead of going abroad 
so soon, and while so incapable of self-support, that, off her knees or 
arm, the physiological heat soon recedes from the surface of his skin? 
Cannot she teach him as well as rear him, give him the food of the 
mind and the food of the body, so appropriately comprehended in 
the word "nurture ?" No; at least, few can. Women cannot do it, 
because they lack time and knowledge. Millions of them have sold 
their whole lives for a paltry pittance; thousands of others have been 
taught the basest absurdities instead of the realities which their child- 
ren thirst for. Hence the children of the most numerous class are 
compelled to go to the Salle d' Plsyle, while the richer are sent to 
the /kindergarten. 

5. The Salle d'plsyle, being open to the needy, receives 
them younger; the Kindergarten, being a pay-school, receives 
them later. These differences generate in the sequel many other 
distinctions, the comparison of which will be the more satisfactory 
for being commenced at the earliest opportunity. Therefore, we 
would advise the study of the plsyle prior to that of the G-arten ; 
and we would not even counsel making a first visit in the middle or 
at the end of a scholastic term, when one can only see the order, ^ 
routine, and monotony resulting from a settled discipline; but rather ' 
visit it at the beginning of a session, when the ancients (six to seven 
years old) have left for the primary, and the freshme?l (two to 
tliree) come in totteringly, giving the observer a vivid idea of their 
first and novel impressions. And how could these impressions be 
otherwise than novel ? New scenery, new language, new rules meet 
them. The most sensible change, however, comes from the differ- 
ence in the character of the personal contacts experienced. Only 
yesterday how frequently did he leave unfinished a piece of mischief, 



to be kissed and warmed at the contact of motlier's larger breast, 
softer frame and superior heating power ? To-day, at the command 
of a distant index, he is filed among the many, and has to stand by 
himself as isolated as a statue on a monumental column. 

\^'hat will he do, then? As isolation would be vacuum, he 
will adapt his own mode of association with that of his new fellows, 
and thereby give us our first lesson in the art of grouping children 
according to sociability at difterent ages. 

As soon as the little ones are together, they coalesce in two 
forms. Seated, they support each other sidewise, not unlike young 
c^x feeble birds on the perch at nightfall. Standmg, they range in a 
one-line procession, like the globules of the blood m the act of circu- 
lation. These rudimentary forms of association of the infant, which 
can also be observed in their first attempts to play, have certainly 
been taken into account, either instinctively (^con aniore) or phil- 
osophically (by the inductive process) in the organization of the 
dalles d'Asyle. Aside from all theories, it is a fact that the 
material, the training, and part, at least, of the living motors of the 
^sylf are in accord with the psycho-physiological conditions of the 
incoming pupils. Here, at least, the school has been mide for the 
child, and the child has not yet been manipulated to fit the school. 

Considering the great difficulties attending the building of these 
.'^syles where they are most needed, in cities where air and room 
are^only desiderata; the novelty of the social venture, which looked 
so much like rearing babies without mother's milk; the liability of 
falling into the pedagogic routines so deeply rooted elsewhere; and, 
moreover, the preying of pardsans on the asyluni, with the view of 
impressing the innocent with the stamp-mark of their hatreds, are 
some of the risks encountered, and partly avoided in the creation 
and management of the Salles (VAsyle in most of the European 
cities. 

There was in Vienna no complete model of Salhs (VAsyle, 
but several of their accessories, as seats, cards, images, and books; 
therefore, we deferred forming an opinion on them, till we sav/ their 
operation in large places Hke Brussels and Paris. 

We found them arranged with a great similarity of plan. A 
yard carefully drained and gra\-eled, open to the sun if possible, and 
planted with trees, discreedy shading its contour; a few shrubs and 
flowers withal in their season. In the entrance-hall, the children, 
who come about 9 o'clock, leave their cloaks, caps, and baskets, 
they wash or are washed, eat, and play, when the weather does not 
permit them to go into the yard. The Salle itself (Italian Sala, 
our school-room, the Gemian Qarte/l) is composed of one or two 
large rooms partly filled with seats and pardy open for exercises. 
The benches are low, long, straight, and movable; or curved, graded, 
and connected by aisles easy to ascend, or to walk along, in single 



file. Near by are a few cradles for those who may need to lie down. 
There are two stands to hold the images or tableaux, a chest for 
safe-keeping of the objects to be used in teaching, and two straw or 
cane chairs. The rest of the room is level, unincumbered, and ready 
for the exercises, in which the children make their serpent-like evol- 
utions. The number of children should not exceed fifty, but may 
reach seventy, a hundred, or even two hundred. Happily, at 12 
o'clock, they are seated at a meal of soup, and something warm, and, 
besides, have delicacies from their baskets. This meal, for which the 
families pay a half-penny, when they can afford it, is the renewal of 
the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes; but as it takes place 
daily none sees it in its true light. — The servant, who prepares it, also 
attends to the wants of the little ones from 9 a. m. to 5 p. m. 

During these eight hours, the principal and her apprentice-assis- 
tant are continually engaged in teaching and training. They have a 
salary of from $200 to $380. Their duties are to receive and make 
tidy the incomers, to make them sit, stand up, raise their hands, fold 
their arms, turn right, left, march softly, or in measure, around the 
stands, to the graded seats, and then to be seated. Then a prayer 
is said in dislocated periods by the multitudinous voices; a hymn is 
sung by the vvilling ones, standing. They are seated again, quest- 
ioned on theogony, theology, subordination to the church, and the 
like, (but not in all the pisyles alike); then ofi"for a well-earned walk, 
objects, colors, forms-lessons, playing ball or other game, with 
accompaniment of selected songs, cantative numeration, the use of 
the abacus [bouUer), walking again; reading, listening to stories; 
then a good meal; washing of hands and faces, play in the yard or 
hall, and repetition of the exercises, till the mother or sister comes 
to take them home. On this curriculum, and on its various diver- 
gent or even opposite tendencies, many observations and long disser- 
tations could be made; few and short must be ours. 

li the object was a direct and formal teaching, it would be too 
comprehensive, as containing too many matters, and as addressed 
to too many grades of comprehension — from two to seven years — 
without reckoning idiosyncrasies. Both difticulties might be obviated 
by separasting the lessons, or by separating the ages; but, happily, 
economy has prevented; so that the Salle d' Plsj/le fashioned itself 
more after the characters of childhood than upon the set antecedents 
of other schools; the great teacher is imitation, which constantly 
and silently carries the newcomers in the wake of the old stock. 

6. Motives. — This character is particularly noticeable in the 
way in which children are brought to the front. In other schools, 
the avowed or principal motive is duty ; scholars ougfd to work, 
ought to learn. Here the impulse is curiosity, which is awakened 
only when, the child being ripe for imitation, his teacher has only t o 
touch the proper chord at the proper time, and he will rise an d 



13 

follow in the wake of others. These are the means by which each 
in his turn, sooner or later, cornes to the front, and begins his active 
life at his own hour. You see him, at first timidly raise his small 
finger to indicate that he, too, will have something to say. If the 
teacher fails to notice it, the finger timidly returns under the apron, 
not to show itself agaui mayhap for months to come. But once out 
— I mean the mind which rose behind the finger and which will not 
^'dowTi" — he begins to take an interest in the curriculum, and when- 
ever he comprehends, or thinks he comprehends, being in sympathy 
with the general movement of the school, he will give free expres- 
sion to his communion in the ideas which agitate the minds of the 
mass. This observation, moreo\-er, shows that the upraising of each 
individual mind is not to be exclusively attributed to the teacher's 
cleverness and zeal; but is as much, if not altogeter, tlie result of the 
action of the synergy of the mass upon the inertia of the individual : 
the traniing power of the whole on the unit. Thus there is nothing 
compulsory, artificial, or unnatural in that double-motive process 
which helps the child to take his share of the curriculum within the 
limits of his taste and capacity; these motives are both of the natural 
order, spontaneous curiosity and simultaneous entrailieilltnt. 

But I am aware that other means of influence, or stimuli, are at 
work. 

The political stimulus is not ashamed to show itself in the Sdlls 
d' Asijle, there to develope a taste for the ribbons and crosses which 
have been borne by the French mandarins, apparent!}- not without 
effect, as talismans against Prussian bullets; but which excite in 
children the pride of trinkets and an ambitition for meretricious dis- 
tinctions. And the so-called religious influence, stealthily boring its 
way into the Salle d\'isule, operates, too, by the action of pagan 
objects and idolatrous worship; acts on the inexperienced senses, by 
the teaching of supernatural causes and effects, by the lowering of the 
natural sciences, and by the falsification of the lessons of history, in 
order to give young morality an incurable wryness. 

These audacities — part of the weapons in the last strugle for 
empire — are used in almost every school in Europe to degrade the 
masses, or to keep them in sul3Jection. This would-be teaching 
affects various forms. It is partly printed and partly oral; avowed in 
one school, surreptitious in another; and more explicit before the 
children alone, than when there are visitors. However, now and 
then, one chances to hear the teachers narrate the apparitions of the 
Virgin Mary; miracles and theurgic cures; the transmigration of a 
demon into a black catf) for the purpose of carrying away the soul 



t) The same demon is served up, with flames, &c., to the negroes of Africa; 
not in S alius d-Asyle^ but on calicoes provided by rehgious Europe for their 
costumes, and for their moral education. 



of an infant; the reprimand addressed to a child, for having disap- 
proved of the cheat practiced by Jacob on Esau, because that cheat 
was in accordance with God's designs. Not only are these super- 
natural and immoral methods of acting on the conscience of infants 
substituted for the pure and natural motives of childhood, sane curi- 
osity, and good example; but inopportune distinctions of sexes are 
knowingly intruded, which open the way to unseasonable curiosity. 

At first, the Congregationist teachers — in plain French parlance 
the ignorantains, or teachers of ignorance — , having once obtained 
a foot-hold in the Scille cV ^Sljle, tried to improve it by separating 
the girls from the boys. That would not work. Separated, 
they became dull, as if life itself had retired from the Salle. 
Brought together again, girls and boys behaved and learned 
harmoniously. But what is now, we are often asked, the 
moral effect of their common attendance ? Some teachers say 
that the girls stimulate the boys by the quickness of their 
repartees; others that the boys are good examples to the girls by the 
directness of their answers. Old teachers have noticed that some 
years the girls had an entrainillij power over the boys; other years 
the boys were decidedly the leaders. Sexually, there was, thank 
God, no sex among them. But it was so important to those^ whose 
business it is to rule one sex by another, that there should be sex, that 
they determined to create it, where there can be none, among 
infants. Therefore, they managed to make them feel this distinction, 
and become, as early as their second year, a prey to the mixture of 
dread, attraction, mirage, hallucination, and sin, resulting from tliis 
untimely revelation. And this revelation was rendered the more 
offensive by punishing girls by seating them among boys, and boys 
among girls, v/here both soon suspect and learn things which require 
a director of conscience. Henceforward, this power will stand be- 
tween them and rule them both, even unto death; commencing early 
to finish late, and low to finish high. To these deleterious influ- 
ences, the principle which presided to the creation of the /SV///€ 
d' Plssyle, and which dictated its successive improvements, has not 
thus far succumbed. That principle is still, in the main, what it 
ought to be, the pure love of children, without which none ought to 
come near them. 

He who loves children does not believe them naturally wicked; 
and he who believes them wicked will, ipso facto^ make them 
wicked. If you tmst them, they will trust you; be kind, they will 
be good. But none can love children who have no children, or 
swear to have none. That is why, really or potentially, fruitful 
women love them more than men; and even girls and single men 
love them more than women barren whether willingly or otherwise. 

It was the good furtune of the Sdlle d' M.syle to be early taken 
in hand by a woman who could put into its management, with the 



15 

requisite qualities of the will and of the mind, motherly virtues and 
powers. Madame Marie Pape-Carpantier*) stands quite in the same 
relation to the SalU cV ^syU, as Froebel does to the Kindergar- 
teily which, the former from France, the latter from Germany, they 
have spread over many countries. At the same time, these two infant- 
schools manifest a tendency to coalesce ; and, before their fusion is 
completed in a more comprehensive plan of general education, it 
may not be amiss to describe and define their actual characteristics.!) 
The Salle d' ^syle is a custodian school where infants are 
familiarly taught the elements of knowledge and of sociability, with 
a view to preparing them for the associated labors which they will 
soon have to perform to earn their livmg. 



*) Since this Report was written, this heroic woman has received her 
reward ; after thirty years service the Jesuites had her ostracised from the asyles 
which she created and organized : French reward. 

t) I had the pleasure of hearing this plan of fusion exposed by Mile. 
Caroline Progler, the eminent teacher, the 17th Sept. 1877, ^t Fribourgh before 
the 6th Congress of the Society of the Instituteurs de la Suisse Romande^ aiid to 
see it applied in the infant-schools of Geneva by their Superintendent, Madam de 
Portugal. So ideas grow in our age faster than men. 



(2) 



16 



Chapter hi. 

The Kindergarten. 

Definition — Use of Objects — History — Teachers — Methods — Automatism — Train- 
ing — The Kindergarten carried into the Salle d^Asyle — Its importance. 

7. Practically, a Kindergarten approaches the ideal of a 
home-like reunion of children, where they are pleasantly placed in 
contact with nature, and allowed the free expansion of their individual 
aptitudes and social qualities. 

Madam Von Marenholtz Buelow has written the first known des- 
cription of this home-like reunion. "In May 1849, arriving at the 
baths of Liebenstein, my landlady told me that a man had settled on 
a small farm, who danced and played with the village children, for 
which he was called a natuTCll fool. Some days after, I met him; a 
tall, thin, with long gray hair, leading a troop of village childi-en, from 
3 to 5 years of age, most of them bare-footed, and scantily clothed. He 
marshaled them for a play, sang with them; his simple bearing, ^vtlile 
the children played under his watchful care, affected us to tears, and I 
said to my companion: This man is called a natuval fool ; perhaps 
he is one of those who, ridiculed and stoned by their contemporaries, 
have monuments erected by the following generation — then to Him : 
You are interested in the education of the people? — Yes, said he, fixing 
his kind eye upon me ; unless we raise the children, our ideals can 
not be realized." The village teacher thus spoken to and of, was 
Friedrich Froebel in his play-sclwol which, in the following year, 
1850, was called a Kindergarten. 

Before it received its final name, it was called t?ie nursery for 
children. But as a school it must have been almost ignored, since 
when Horace Mann made his celebrated Report on the popular 
schools and methods of teaching in Europe in 1843, he did not say 
a word of the kindergarten, nor named Froebel, but "signalized as 
the two foremost objects of his admiration, the teaching of the deaf- 
mutes to speak, and the first school for idiots at Bicetre".*) Indeed 
this Report caused the creation in Massachusetts of similar schools. 



*) From a letter of Madam Horace Mann to Miss Mathilda Satterie, the 
talented Manager of one of the Industrial schools of New York. 



If this indefatigable inquirer had found traces of a kindergarten in 
Europe it would have been he, and not his noble wife and her 
apostolic sister, Miss E. Peabody, who would have later preached 
the said news of the movement school and of the pleasant learning. 
Far from it, Horace Mann remained the professor of strict discipline, 
progressive but puritan, who never heard of a play-SChool, nor 
dreamed of becoming the teacher who dances and plays with his 
pupils, like a natural fool. 

This new teaching was better represented in Vienna than the 
other infant-schools, for the principal reason that it had more to 
show. Its show consisted in the objects used in learning and play- 
ing — which are there quite identical occupations with the children — 
and in other objects, products of their own work-and-play. Of these 
objects, the most remarkable are the collections of pictures of ani- 
mals, objects, familiar human actions, popular scenes, «S«:c., made in view 
of extending the knowledge, or of provoking the speech, comparison^ 
and deduction. The tableaux of animals from Paris (Hachette) are 
the best; Leipsic furnished the finest graduated scenes. The large 
tableaux of simple melodies, which can be read from the farther end 
of an ordinary room, came from Switzerland, where they do not be- 
long exclusively to the Kindergaiien. 

There is also an abundance and variety of typical forms, some 
used for teaching, others for the construction of complicated figures,-, 
and the noAv unavoidable lettered or colored blocks: also, the sticks 
or tiles, adjustable with pins and mortises, to represent skeleton- 
objects, glass beads, (which children may swallow, trample on, and 
break in dangerous fragments,) ribbons, colored papers and straws, 
blank books, and sheets cut, marked, or quadrated, to impose their 
symmetry upon the work done on them, and many other ingenious 
appliances to please and instruct, too numerous to mention. This 
richness would create confusion if it were not easy to arrange these 
objects in their natural order, as those used to impart knowledge and 
those to exercise the skill, one kind speaking to the mind, another to 
the hand, and a certain number of each kind forming the curriculum 
of each day in the week. Finally, there are a number of exercises 
which are not represented in the {Velt-:^USStellung, but which are 
detailed in manuals, consisting of movements, harmonious to certain 
tunes, songs accompanied or not by pantomimes, calisthenics, and 
dancing, not forgetting the practice of the alphabet and first reader, 
stealthily brought thither by an old teacher. Miss Routine. 

However, the Kind ergai^ ten is a great success. It is well 
represented at Berlin, Vienna, London, Paris, Brussels, la Hague, 
New York, and all the other large cities of Europe and America. 
Moreover, its moral principle of making the school attractive, and 
learning a pleasure, works its way into the minds of the disciplinar- 
ians, and tends to modify and mollify the old school coercions and 



18 V 

rigors. But as the adoption, in infant and primar)^ schools, of the 
technical changes introduced in the Kindergarten, is only a question 
of time, this time must be employed in considering what is the prin- 
ciple of this new education, and whether teachers comprehend and 
apply this principle m its entirety. 

8. History. — For some reason, the history of the Kindergar- 
ten has never been frankly told. The typical child of the eighteenth 
century was educated in the first Kindergarten. His teacher did 
not adhere to any particular school but prepared the natural means 
of educating all children by a life-long idealization of what homo- 
culture must be. This teacher had but one pupil. The other child- 
ren of his time were coerced, he was induced. Educators were still 
uniformly flogging — each pedagogue holding his ferule, or each col- 
lege boasting of a Brother Frappart, (Strike- Hard;) his child had his 
natural gifts developed by objective gifts into individual talents and 
social usefulness, and became the type of modern culture. The 
history of liis progress traced the next curriculum. Free activity 
became the acknowledged — no more the accursed — motor of youth. 
The natural gifts were allowed to form the basis of individual talent 
and of social usefulness; to each man the bent of his genius and a trade. 

Who did that ? Keen Jean Paul Richter ? Devoted Pestalozzi ? 
Zealous Froebel? No! Jean Jacques Rousseau alone did it!=^) Pity 
that such good men are loaded with the honor of inventing what^ 
they only put into practice. But let us hasten to say that in this ped- 
dling of the idea which makes all men equal before the lessons and 
impulses of nature, there was, and is yet, enough of glory for all the 
workers. 

Why the idea of Rousseau was not as readily applied as 
it was comprehended by the society of his time — the most quick- 
witted since the coterie of Pericles — is accounted for by many cir- 
cumstances. This society was shaken, and about to disappear ; and 
the Germans, who took up the idea of Rousseau, were only practical 
teachers. This alone must have prevented them from comprehend- 
ing Rousseau, who had conceived more general notions than those 
of the official teachers of his time, or even of their radical opponents, 
Locke, Condillac, Helvetius; and was enabled, by his great power 
of concentration, to work up his ideas into a structure, whose founda 
tion rests on liberty and spontaneity. 

9. Method. — The Kinder gardeners began their revolution by 
substituting objects for books in teaching, according to the express 
doctrine of Rousseau ; but that is no evidence that they understood 
his philosophy. For instance, their great and avowed plan in giving 
object-lessons was to extend the knowledge of the child, not to give 
more precision and reach to his perceptions. Objects are dis- 
tinguished by their properties, among which the form is conspicuous. 

*) Commenius and Montaigne foresaw it, Rousseau formulated it. 



19 

The form results from an ensemble of limiting lines, which, so to 
speak, mold the identity of objects; that is the reason why object- 
lessons have, for a base, line-lessons. Line-lessons are given by 
Kind.eT gardeners with blocks and sticks, the combinations of which 
produce diverse forms or figures \ but these lessons are not concur- 
rently given in their most ideal realization, which would lead to draw- 
ing and manual movements. Therefore, the concourse of manual 
movement with drawing and combination of bodies necessary to 
perfect ideals remains ignored. The line-lessons, thus limited, are 
given in the natural order from the simple to the complex, but they 
certainly are neither complete, nor systematic, nor productive of 
serial ideas. 

To ascertain if, in the direct teaching of objects, the Kinder- 
gardener S have been guided by broader views than that of lines, let 
us consider, for instance, their primary block or figure. Had they 
chosen it with their senses — as it must speak to the senses of the 
child — instead of with their mind, they would certainly never have 
selected the cube, a form in which similarity is everywhere, difference 
nowhere, a barren type, incapable, by itself, of instigating the child 
to comparison and action. Had they, on the contrary, from infant- 
ile reminiscences, or from more philosophical indications, of which 
we have no room to wTite, selected a block of brick-form, or a 
parallelogram, the child would have soon discovered and made use 
of the similarity of the straight lines, and of the difference of the 
three dimensions. By training one pupil with the cube, and another 
\vith the parallelogram, one can see the difference : 

a. Put a cube on your desk, and let the pupil put one on his; 
you change the position of yours, he accordingly of his. If you 
renew these moves till both of you are tired, they will not make any 
perceptible change in the aspect of the object. The movement has 
been barren of any modification perceptible to the senses and ap- 
preciable to the mind. There has been no lesson, unless you have, 
by words speaking to the mind, succeeded in making the child com- 
prehend the idea of a cube derived from its intrinsic properties : a 
body with six equal sides and eight equal angles. 

b. Hold a parallelogram, (a pine brick 2X4X8 inches, if you 
please,) and give a like one to the pupil. Put it up before you, 
presenting to view its 4 X 8 inches face; he does the same. We leave 
it up, only turning to the front its 2x8 inches face, and we continue 
till we have exhausted all the rectangular positions of our rectangle; 
every position having given the child a perception of each side, and 
their reunion in his mind having suscitated a complete idea of the 
object, and of its possible uses in relation to its form. What a spring 
of effective movements, of perceptions, and of ideas in this exercise, 
where analogy and difference, incessantly noted by the touch and 
the view, challenge the mind to comparison and judgment! 



20 •: 

The Kinder gardener begins the teaching of forms with a ball 
alone, or with a cube and a ball, or with several cubes, without ap- 
pearing to suspect the radical differences between exercises of com- 
parison of the different parts of an object, and of two objects, and 
the exercises of combination of single objects to form a compound 
one. But the comparison of two objects which are without analogy 
(like the cube and the ball) is not only incongruous for the child, it 
is also deceptive for the teacher ; the child may distinguish them 
mainly as playthings, while his teacher may believe he has imparted 
the notions of straight lines and flat surfaces, and of curve lines and 
curve surfaces, to his pupil. Having begun wrong, if it is found 
necessary to use two forms to give birth, by their comparison, to the 
idea of configuration, then, on one side, let the cube be compared 
with the parallelogram, and, on the other, the sphere with the ovum. 
In either of these comparisons, there would be found the elements 
of a homogeneous judgment, (viz, analogy and difference;) but it 
would not be a primary one, nor an unmixed one, as seen by the 
following example : If it were found necessary to use several cubes, 
in order to produce, by their juxtaposition, the idea of the cubic 
form, the teacher would soon discover that another idea had crept 
in among the blocks — the idea of construction, or of the combination 
of parts to form a whole — an idea which is far from elementary. 
This immingling of the compound types of lines and forms in the 
teaching of the elementary ones shows an imperfect understanding 
of the subject. So does the lack of rational progression in the teach- 
ing of compound lines and figures ; and more so the already noted 
isolation of these exercises — form-studying,and block-building — from 
their congeners and factors, drawing and hand-exercises. 

Every line of the outward w^orld represents a design worked out at 
the point of contact of pressure with resistance : that is nature's way 
of modeling its gracious or awful scenery. By a similar process, every 
line of our own creation is the consolidated track of the passage of our 
hand; so that every line left behind leaves on matter, and expresses, 
not only our ideal meaning, but the very feelings which agitated it 
from the recesses of our ideal or sympathetic regions. Whence we 
conclude that, concurrendy to teaching the notions of forms and 
lines, w^e must train the hand to execute them — not only as expres- 
sions of our ideas, but also of our feelings. Otherwise, we would 
give an undue predominance to objective over subjective education ; 
and that is what has happened, according to my estimation, in the 
Kindergarten, notwithstanding the set intentions of its author. On 
another hand, v/e admire his ingenuity in using these first gifts, as 
he kindly calls them, to impart elementary notions of practical arith- 
metic and geometry. 

lo. Training. Here the hand has been used more and better 
than in primary schools or colleges; but it has been no more physi- 



-ologically trained to do the bidding of the will than the mind has to 
understand the progression of Hnes and forms. 

The objects made by the children, exhibited in Vienna, or in 
the G-'drten, speak well for the zeal of the teachers and the industry 
of the pupils ; but they are products of the use of the hand, no 
means of physiologic training ; some will say that use trains. That 
is true as far as it goes ; and since this has become a part of the 
problem of education, it is necessary to answer the question, "How 
far does it go ?" No farther than the automatism necessary to repeat 
a task on a given plan ; and it leaves the worker just where, in hist- 
ory, the lower classes in India, in Egypt, and in Europe stopped, 
and where the Americans, as a people, must not stop. 

To complete our observations on the unsystematic but practical 
use of the hand by children, let us incidentally say — though the idea 
•deserves a greater development — that we have at once distinguished 
two classes of object-making in the Kindergarten : one, more 
play-like, whose history is interesting : the other, more scholastic, 
whose importance in the method invites discussion. 

Object-making for pleasure has probably from time immemorial 
occupied a large place in the family; but the *'£mile" made it al- 
most fashionable. Under the influence of that book, mothers, and 
particularly fathers, if my infant recollections are correct, brought to 
this mode of informal teaching an eagerness equalled only by that 
of their litde ones. We, petits^ Bourgilig?lons, would try to imi- 
tate papa's hand, when its moving silhouette on the wall intended to 
be a representation of the wolf, the hare, or the carpenter at his 
bench. We would, after him, build with dominoes trembling towers, 
and with cards, tents for our soldiers. From paper we manufactured, 
by simply folding, chicks, {cocotes,^ houses, Noah's arks, and fleets 
of less historical crafts ; and with scissors we made purses, scales, 
hangings, frills, and crowns. We soon learned to cut apricot and 
cherry stones into hearts, baskets, cliaplet-beads ; to form the acorn 
and the horse-chestnut into grotesque shapes, and to make cups and 
vases out of melon-seeds. The same Kinder gardener of nature 
would show us in the Spring how to give a voice to the willow, by 
separating its bark from the wood, cutting vocal cords, and re-uniting 
the parts as a flute ; or in summer to pick up tall green rye-stalks, 
and, under a hawthorn by the way-side, to split them, according to 
their thicknesses, to produce the varied concert which would frighten 
the bird on our way home. At home, again, we would be shown 
the use of tools in our childish undertakings, which, mischievous as 
most of them would be, unhooping casks to give them more strength, 
tearing the covers oft" our school books to bind them in a brighter 
style, &c., could not fail to develop handicraft. But now more of these 
reminiscences crowd on the mind than we have room for, and we 
must check their flow, and thank Froebel for having harbored in his 



22 

Kindergarten some of our best, alas ! forgotten, means of home 
education, 

We now come to systematic object-making proper. With blocks, 
sticks, straws, and the other things, on quadrated tables, slates, or 
papers, the children superpose objects, inlay ribbons, trace lines, 
paint figures, and various other things. These pretty combinations 
they execute, not, as superficial lookers-on imagine, by an intellectu- 
al process, but within the strict limits of prepared plans, by the repeat- 
ing capacity of their senses, particularly of the vision. On these prepar- 
ed plans, antipodal arrangements are incited by dualistic sensations, 
and are performed by the property inherent to muscle, of repeating 
its own vibrations ; a property which, in the animal fiber, constitutes 
automatism. It is this vibratile property — first recognized by Bag- 
livy : Be Fihra Motrica, cap. ii. vibrations, which renders epi- 
lepsy less curable in proportion to the number of past attacks. — It 
is it, too, which, substituted for the operations of the mind by 
aCCOUtuviance in labor, renders them quicker, and more regular at 
the same time, but insusceptible of perfection in the long run. The 
effects of both, the dualistic structure and the vibratile property, are 
well illustrated in the case : a, of the infant, who, ha\dng one ob- 
ject in one hand, wants another, and if possible a similar one in the 
other hand ; or having experienced on one side of his body a sensa- 
tion agreeable or otherwise, is left in suspense, awaiting the same sen- 
sation on the other side ; b, and of grown people, who, after rubbing 
one side of their body or face, or one limb, experience on the op- 
posite side an itching, which also imperiously calls for a similar rub- 
bing. For the same duality of sensations, the kitten makes its toilet 
very systematically on each side with both paws ; and, more to our 
point, its mother — who keeps her Kindergarten at night — when 
giving it one of her object-lessons with a mouse, or, in default of a 
mouse, with a paper ball, not only teaches it to see in the dark, and 
to smell what it cannot see — admirable sensorial gymnastics — but 
also to catch the game, let go, and seize again, alternately and aut- 
omatically, with its right and left claws. But from this object-lesson, 
there are lessons for others than kittens. That is an object-lesson, 
no doubt, its object being to impart a knowledge of the mouse, of its 
habits,, of its modes of escape and defense; but it is also a subjective 
lesson, in which the object becomes subordinate to the subject, by 
bringing forward the training of the senses and of the muscular con- 
tractility, necessary to make a living ; a result not always attained 
by classical education. But the amount of training which suffices to 
enable pussy to take its degrees in the instinctive school does not 
suffice to graduate a child in respect to intellect and moral volition. 
He is arrived at the point of turning to higher aims. At this point, 
thQ Kinder gardener S ^^^^ to establish the link of continuity between 
the automatic and the willed action, the preception and the idea, the 



instinct and the morality. And why ? Because they have employed 
all the while, knowingly or not, the instruments of the school of the 
naturalist with the principles of the supernaturaiist. Their education- 
al process consisted in assigning to all objects, acts, or ideas, the re- 
motest of the final causes, mstead of the nearest proximate or prob- 
able one ; or of frankly leaving a blank where experience had not yet 
given a natural answer. 

This culture by the savage-like process of thinking and acting,, 
given even in the would-be realistic school, discourages teachers and 
students, curtails curiosity by rendering its stirrings aimless, lowers 
the learned into quietism, the ignorant into brutism, and the child to 
automatism. It is a fact, that all matters viewed in that light be- 
come dead objects ; that men looking in that direction see only fate 
ahead^; and that the nations who, under our very eyes, descend in 
the scale of manhood, do it just as fast as they place supernaturalisni 
above naturalism in education. In this, the school reflects the con- 
dition of science when tainted with the hypothesis of spirit and matter. 

This tiypothesis, yet supported by the theory of the two lives ot 
Bichat, upholds the idea of an encephalon supreme over the other 
nervous organs, and receiving its inspirations from powers above, in 
antagonism to the dictates of Him who rules the parts below. (As 
a decoy, the investigations tending to locate a vital knot in the 
skull were encouraged.) 

The other idea is that of a sympathetic double chain, acting 
on, and actuated by, the cerebro-spinal axis and its net-work, the 
heart and its vessels, the stomach and its dependencies, besides its 
own many plexuses and ganglia ; an idea which represents the nerv- 
ous system as a unit, a self-acting voltaic pile, good to work as long 
as the liquids of the tissues remain oxidizable in physiological pro- 
portions, without preternatural interference. 

Who can fathom the difference which those principles open be- 
tween two schools ? One set of children imposed on by supernat- 
ural or miraculous solutions of their inquiries, the other helped to re- 
fer phenomena to the nearest natural law already found or to be in- 
vestigated; one set fated to blind submission, the other free to in- 
quire, and to acquire all possible knowledge. And though it could 
not be said that the SalU d' :isijU and the Kindergarten are 
exact realizations of these typical doctrines — since I have taken some 
pains to show how they respectively somewhat deviate from them — 
they are average specimens of the possibility of the adaptation of 
these doctrines to the present infant-schools, and of the eftbrts of 
partisans to put their stamp on blank brains and sympathetic ganglia. 

But as these principles are incompatible, and cannot coalesce, 
there is on foot a plan of fusing the Salle d' M.syle in the Kinder- 
garten, in view of infusing in the most popular school the progres- 
sive elements of the select one. The naturalist teachers are few, and 



persecuted in several countries ; the supernaturaiists are organized in 
corporations, and supported by the powers to whom they bargained 
to deliver youth shorn of its free will ; therefore, the true teacher's 
task has against it ail the external elements, but for it the inward ele- 
ments of justice and progress. 

We watched this movement as closely as possible, and found, 
naturally enough, the schools of these hunted reformers spreading 
under dithculties. However, we have seen them, in Paris, Geneva, 
and Brussels working well. From the ^syle, ox Kindergarten per- 
iod, to apprenticeship, the "Ifnion Scolaire'' carries along both 
sexes so satisfactorily that its girls and boys have positions secured 
two years in advance. But in Lyons, where we wished also to see 
them, those schools had just been closed : A part of a succession of 
indignities perpetrated by the prefect-monster of 1873, to raise the 
anger of the Lyonnais to cannonade them, and, through smoke and 
blood to bring Henry V. on the wings of Notre Dame de Fourviere. 
The good sense of the people defeated this plan, but the Union 
Scolaire was, and still remains, suppressed — for which Notre 
Dame de Fourviere is yet heard laughing outright. Pauvre 
France! So that I cannot say that there is in Paris, Vienna, or 
anywhere else, a true "Physiological Infant-School." 



25 



CHAPTER IV. 

Physiological Infant-School. 

Origin and basis; Opportunities for its establishment ; Physiological considera- 
tions; Should the eiicephalon be first trained^ Central nervous system; Sym- 
pathetic functions ; Training of contractility ; Automatism; Rhythm; Imita- 
tion; Symmetry; Asymmetry; Effects on man and animals ; Equal educa- 
tion of both sides; Recapitulation. 

II. The Physiological Infant- School will result from the 
union of the kind training of the Salle d'^syle and the joyous 
exercises of the Kindergarten, with the application of physiology 
to education. None will question the opportuneness of this intellec- 
tual movement ; but one may hesitate to predict where it will suc- 
ceed best. Germany had the start, but failed to comprehend the 
entirety of the idea of a general system of education strictly physio- 
logical. France, early favored with the ideas of Montaigne, Bayle, 
Rousseau, Pereire, Itard, and others, has of late shown itself ill-adapt- 
ed for their culture and propagation ; and just now her ruling classes 
fly into a fury at the simple enunciation of a new idea ; they would 
strangle Hercules m his cradle were he born among them. England 
has the brains and the means to educate all her men and women ; 
but, just now, she applies both to over-educate gentlemen, from a 
mistaken comprehension of Darwin's theories.*) Holland and 
Switzerland, oases of thought in Europe, would accept the idea of 
physiological education for infants ; but they need it less than other 
provinces, since their women are the most competent and willing 
to educate their childien at home. 

But why look abroad for opportunities v/hich are ripe m our 
midst ? The nation which, in its mfancy, organized primary and 
grammar schools for two millions of children is able to create the 
infant-school, not by copying European institutions, but by forming 
its own out of the conception of the popular wants. This new im- 
pulse will come, as came the former : ideas percolate through minds, 
like water through the soft rind of earth, to form mighty currents ; 
let us only tell the truth, it will soon be realized ; fifty thousand lady 
teachers, who listen for the approaching idea, stand ready to apply 
it, if true. 

"") Since 1873, England has made the noblest efforts to open popular schools 
for all her children, ar.d even for all those affected with idiocy. 



26 

12. Physiological considerations. — Of the three factors of 
the Infant- School, we have sketched the SCille (V PiSyle and the 
Ki/ldergarte/I. We must now sum up the contributions of physiol- 
ogy to the natural method of education. The physiological method 
trains the organs to educate their functions, and, conversely, exer- 
cises the functions to develop their organs. But whatever may be 
the gross proximate organs of our functions, these organs are subor- 
dinate to the nervous system ; all actions being initiated or reflected 
by, or conveyed to, one of the nervous centers by nerve-cords. 
Electric currents likewise occur in animal muscles and in vegetable 
tissues ; but the stimulation of animal tissues takes place in the hun- 
dredth part of a second, and that of the vegetable tissue in about a 
third part of a second. After several strong stimulations, the fiber 
of a frog loses its contractility, but recovers it after rest ; so, after 
each stim.ulation, a leaf is, as it were, exhausted, and requires a rest 
of ten to thirty seconds to recover its contractile capacity. Thus the 
process of vital contractility is the same in the vegetable as in the 
animal tissue, only thirty times slower to recover itself, after exhaust- 
ion. But what amount of scholastic stimulation can a child bear? 
And, when he is exhausted, how much of rest is needed to restore 
his nervous contractility ? Who cares ? In other words, the modes 
of expenditure and of restoration of contractile synergy, which is the 
first function of all living organism, are not, but should be, studied 
in the child, as they have been in the frog, or in the Di(UCUl-) by 
Dr. J. B. Sanderson ; so that this calculation could be made, from 
the beginning, the economical basis of education. 

The economical basis of education rests upon the facts that 
every bemg has his normal heat; that mxan has his — 98*^.6 Fahren- 
heit, =37^ centigrade =0*^ of the Physiological Thermometer ; that 
any deviation from this noniie represents an abnormal oxidation; 
and that, by the vibration of the nervous apparatus during afterent, 
reflex, or deferent circuits, surplus heat is evolved. This surplus 
heat evolved at school above the norme (98^.6 F. = 37'^ C. = o of 
the Physiological Thermometer) represents the economical expense 
of life in labor, as the surplus heat evolved during fever is the mathe- 
matical expression of its waste in disease. But how a scholastic 
expense of heat of .4 C. above the nornie, from morning till night, 
may suddenly or gradually increase to 1^, 2*^, or more degrees, and 
become, not only pathological, hut deadly, is the first problem, 
which raises itself, like a specter, before a teacher who has thus lost 
some of his best pupils — unless he purposely educates them for the 
next world. 

A well-manufactured but sophistic book recently created a sen- 
sation, by attributing to overwork at school the ruin of girls' health. 
If the author had studied his subject ("Sex in Education") in both 
sexes, instead of in the tormented profile of enervated young ladies^ 



27 

he could have seen that the collegiate curriculum is as murderous for 
boys as for girls, when applied by learned ignoramuses. For instance, 
it is but yesterday, that the promising young Dr. Richerand died of 
overwork because the modern tests of the science, in which his 
grand father's name will remain famous, were not applied in time ; 
physicians are fallible, of course ; but what of those who pretend to 
rule the school m virtue of their infallibility ? Against them, in a 
single family, history records two of their \ictims for 1872 — '73. 
The young Due de Guise, and Don Fernando de Montpensier, his 
cousin, who both died from scholar's meningitis, which could have 
been suspected, watched, and arrested upon the timely indications 
of physiological thermometry ; an art advocated by Littre, therefore 
deprecated by the governor of these princes, the archbishop of Or- 
leans. But there are thousands of over-worked brains — irrespective 
of sexes — which, not being of royal pulp, leave no names — heads 
on wings floating in the tears of their mothers. Therefore, before 
commencing their course, teachers must establish the individual 
Jiorme of temperature, pulse, and respiration of each pupil, unless 
the latter comes from home with these nor^mes already established 
— normes far more miportant than the proofs of vaccination. And 
they ought to refer to this standard of health, if not daily, at least 
w^henever the child seems overworked. 

I know that physicians must do, and control this work ; that is 
why I read, last year, a paper on the "Interference of physicians in 
Education" before the American MedicalAssociation, and two others,, 
on the use of our parks and gardens as school-grounds, "Garden- 
schools", before the New York Academy of Sciences (April 30, 1877 
and February i, 1878}. Indeed, the agitation for a more physio- 
logical education must not cease till physicians will watch over the 
expense of vitality, and the developments of the functions, of our 
five millions of pupils. 

13. Training. — And now for the work of the school. What 
traming will best please, suit, and benefit the infant ? That which 
corresponds to the organization and to the natural evolution of the 
functions in childhood. 

This order does not tally with the trilogy of mind, soul, and 
matter ; nor with the dissection of the mind in mental faculties ; nor 
with the monarchical pretensions of the conjugal couple of cerebral 
hemispheres over the whole nervous system ; but it harmonizes with 
the observations of Vic D'Azyr, Cabanis, Durand de Gros, Brown- 
Sequard, Vulpian, Shift', and more recently Claude Bernard (in his 
Legons sur la c/ialeiir animate), who have gradually disclosed 
the capacity of small ganglia and even of the peripheric termini of 
nerves, to become the starting, or the central points of neurotic 
actions, in which the encephaion may act a secondary, or no part. 

Ages before the brain effloresced in convolutions in mankind, 



28 

living things had appetences, emotions, sympathies, or repulsions^ 
and biological duties, not unlike those which to-day challenge our 
admiration in fishes and insects. In our species, foetuses have been.' 
born living without brain or spinal cord, like the lower animals, desti- 
tute of these organs. But normally, when the rudimentary encepha- 
lon is not yet in contact with the world through the senses, the sym- 
pathetic current makes the foetus participant to the effective and 
affective modalities of the mother, through the umbilical cord. 
Through this conductor of impressions, circulation, nutrition, neur- 
ility, are altered or strengthened ; infirmities and deformities, super- 
ior or strange endowments, are acquired ; moral individuality is 
even formed in utero as in a mold; all this while the head sometimes 
receives, but rarely gives the impulse. When the child is yet at- 
tached to the mother by the mammse, everything coming to his 
senses, and mostly to his tact by contact with her, is intuitively 
known and resented, without the slightest interference of the mind„ 
through sympathies. 

At the time he enters the infant-school, if the child has not 
been brutified by an intellectual education, and his physiological plan, 
tortured by forcing his impressions toward the brain, one can see in 
him, as in a mirror, the anatomical bent of his impulses or of his 
impressions : The sympathetic appears as a tramway of both sensi- 
tiveness and conduction, leading to and from all the viscera, and 
also as a generator of nerveforce ready for distribution, to the head 
by the cephalic filaments, to the heart by the penetration in it of 
small ganglia, to the stomach by the solar plexus, to the intestines 
by the mesenteric, asserting over all its initial or inhibitory, always 
moderating and central influence. When this view shall have 
received the attention of true teachers, they will alter their curricu- 
lum in this wise — will cease to exclusively cultivate the upper portion 
of the nervous system, and will bestow a proportionate attention to 
the wants of the more central ganglia, and train the functions of' the 
whole system in view of their co-relations and concordance. Then 
will cease to rule, rage, and ruin the inner dualism which, instead 
of being created by Satan, created him. Then teachers will be able 
to return service for service to physiologists, by demonstrating that 
the cause of the increase of insanity, indeed of almost all the insani- 
ties, is the discordance, nay, the antagonism, raised by education, 
customs, and creeds between the cephalic and the central parts of 
the nervous circuit; that the functions disorganized, at first are 
curable at once, but that the organs subsequently altered by accoutu- 
niance or shock are rendered incurable. This we predict, and sup- 
port on the evidence that, in true savage-life, where the whole nerv- 
ous system is evenly let alone to the drifts of instincts, insanity is 
unknown ; but where the strain on the mind is excessive, and the 
sympathetic wants ignored or subdued, insanity is rife. So it is with 



the training of the Polytechnic School of Paris, which produces 
possibly the best scholars, certainly more insanity than any other 
French school. 

Unfortunately, it is yet popular, and may remain so for some 
time, to extol, and, alas ! to excite what is called the intelligence of 
infants. But if an infant was allowed to grow by his physiological 
and only safe growth, it would be seen that cerebral activity does 
not play the conspicious part we are inclined to think it does in his 
determinations ; that what we mistake for his judgments are his sym- 
pathies ; that we cannot without peril rashly fill his brain with im- 
pressions which may, or may not, in after years, become the ele- 
ments of mental operations; that, unless these impressions are direct- 
ed toward the sympathetic organs, they have no action on the 
eventful feats of childhood, and almost none on those of later life ; 
this for many reasons, of which two will suffice. 

a. At this age, external mipressions may be reflected on the 
cerebral convolutions, and on the sympathetic central ganglia, as 
images of objects are reflected on surfaces sensitive to light. But 
there is this difference : when the impressions on the gray matter of 
the cerebral convolutions have become mixed or defaced, they leave 
no trace ; but when the impressions have vanished from the sympa- 
thetic ganglia, they yet leave behind such indelible determinations 
as will overrule the intellectual teaching. Supernaturalists penetrate 
this way to take their mortgage on the coming man if they can 
pervert this sense; upright educators ought to be able to train it in. 
the right direction. 

h. Another difterence is in the process of entrance of the per- 
ceptions tQward the cerebrum of the sympathetic. If the object to 
be perceived by an infant is directed toward his reflective centers, his 
effort at thinking is almost always too great for the object, and, gray- 
hound-like, he overleaps what you wanted him to grasp ; or, if he 
comprehends and apprehends it right, it is by a concentration of 
synergy, for w^hich an abnormal amount of blood is accumulated in 
the encephalon ; the congestion is announced by the color and swel- 
ling of the blood-vessels, and the effort by a rise of the surface- 
thermometer at the temples. If, on the contrary, the objects pres- 
ented to his perception have been directed toward the affective 
nerve-center, their impressions are more sure and do not predispose, 
like the former, to infantile hemiplegia or meningitis ; he feels them 
like a sensation about the diaphragm, during which the respiration 
may be somewhat momentarily suspended by the emotion, then re- 
sumed deeper, with a quicker beat of the heart, and a blood-current 
of an inexpressible happiness. Who has not kept, at least, a vague 
remembrance of this state of our infant bosom when it was permitted 
to saturate itself, without admixture of forcing reasons and reason- 
pig, with the emotions produced by new contacts, new movements,. 



30 

new colors, new sounds, new voices, new associations, new sceneries, 
new people ; for instance, the features of a new baby in the family, 
all things which, touching us to the quick, touched us forever. But 
how few children are allowed the inenarrable delicacies of this edu- 
cation by the sympathies ! Some given up to pedantic mentors ; 
some crushed by home tyranny ; some nursed v/ith depressing 
mythologies ; some anaesthetized of noble feelings by debasing wants; 
most of them rebuked for their silly eagerness to know things which 
they can find out for themselves as soon as they have mastered the 
twenty-six symbols, which are supposed to contain all knowledge, 
and therefore they are hurried to the book. And how few remain, 
stray babies, on the lap of placid mothers, allowed to feel their own 
surroundings, and to come out from this emotional baptism, poets, 
painters, sava/lts, interpreters in their own language of mother- 
nature ! Agassiz began one of his most renowned courses by beg- 
ging each of his pupils to come to the opening lesson with a grass- 
hopper in his hand. Why could we not begin lower with infants by 
encouraging them to come to school with the things in their hands 
which please them best ? 

C, What wT have said of the collective movements of the infants 
in the Salle d'Asyle; of the power of automatism on the produc- 
tion and repetition of movements ; of the aptitude to imitate, which 
carries one child after another into the vortex of the movements of 
the school ; of the organic dualism of our senses, by which are sup- 
plied the elements, and acquired the habits, of comparison; of the 
differential impressions made by the sensations, according as they are 
directed toward the sympathetic 'or toward the encepholon ; of the 
local congestions, and of the evolution of heat as a result of oxida- 
tion during scholastic labor : these elements, though unavoidably 
scattered here, can easily be united in the mind of the reader to form 
what they really are — the broad physiological basis of infantile edu- 
cation. 

Commencing by the exercise of muscular contractility, we must 
make good use of the sympathetic adhesion of the infant to his 
mother. The transference of this propensity toward his mates we 
have witnessed in the Sdlle (V ^syle. Add to this his automatic 
aptitudes to repeat a movement once made, to support these repeti- 
tions on rhythms, and to be impelled by imitation, and you have a 
perfect living realization of what seems impossible in the abstract — 
an individual without individuality, only with latent sympathies, that 
is the infant ; and these are the means of training his first steps out 
of impotent dependence. To develop his individuality, and to grad- 
ually sever him from outward supports and dependence, you have 
first to use these supports and connections, so as to be able to drop 
them gradually, and to leave the child self-supporting enough to 
select his own independent associations. Such appears to be the 



31 

stadium of muscular contractility through which he must pass, from 
automatism and imitation, to rational and willed activity. 

d. The opening exercises of the infant-school would correspond 
to these first physiological indications. In them, the children at first 
adhere to each other, move in cadence, automatically, then in imita- 
tion, all together, with little attention, and an almost indifferent 
pleasure in which the brain has no part ; a kind of quiet and sym- 
pathetic lullaby, not unlike that which induces hypnotism, leads their 
movements, which in the course of the exercises gradually attain to 
natural, healthy, precise, and independent attitudes. Their progres- 
sion toward the complete mastery of the function of contractility 
would run thus: 

The establishment, in well-defined series, of these grades, from 
automatic to reasoned and willed exercises ; from general to special 
movements ; from personal acts (acts relating to the child) to object- 
ive acts (relating to objects,) &c. 

The grouping of children, according to some anomaly in plus 
and niinus of their contractile functions, or to imperfections in their 
organs of contractility, to correct which it is generally sufficient to 
institute special trainings. (It is thus that the anomaly — rather, a 
disease, chorea, which always affects one side more than the other — 
is almost, invariably prevented by, or recedes before, an appropriate 
muscular training.) 

The gradual bringing of all the available forces of contractility 
under the control of the will; at first in individuals, later in groups, 
and by exercises more and more complicated. 

The gradual concentration of automatic, initative, and willed 
exercises of contractility m the hand, in order to render it capable 
of executing with the utmost rapidity and precision the orders from 
the encephalon. 

The elementary training of both sides of the body, and of both 
hands in particular, in order to ascertain how far the two sides can 
be trusted with advantage and without danger, to work either alter- 
nately, substitutively, complementarily, or concurrently. 

We have pointed out the importance of this last problem at 
birth, and, further on, will have to refer to it m connection with 
professional education ; but here, at the start, it is particularly de- 
sirable, that teachers should know, that the anatomists and physiolo- 
gists have brought the question to the door of the school, therein to 
receive its most practical solution. 

A little attention to this problem discovers in it two factors, 
primary organism and education. The effect of the latter is con- 
tinued by accoutuniance, whose life-long and hereditary operation 
modifies the former. 

14. Symmetry in training. — About organism : As circulation 

(3) 



32 ■ 

supplies the material for action, we must first consider the differences 
in the canalization of the arterial blood at its issue from the cross of 
the aorta in man and in animals, in order to find the exact position 
we occupy in regard to our modes of activity. In this respect, I 
have stated, that infants generally lie on their right sides. This re- 
clination, which is a primordial sequence of anatomical structure, 
soon becomes, in its turn, a cause of exaggeration of the structural 
inequality. In mammalia, the blood, gushing from the heart through 
the cross of the aorta, finds its way up by different system of emerg- 
ences. When the emergence of the cephalic arteries from the cross 
of the aorta is unique, and its upward canalization perfectly sym- 
metrical in its right and left bifurcations, as in the horse, the move- 
ments are swift and harmonious, the temper may easily become be- 
wildered, but the animal will fight well only for love and in self-de- 
fense. The same unique emergence, but with less concording bifur- 
cations, produces the equally swift but less symmetrical movements 
of the camel and its tribe. 

When the emergences from the aorta are two, lateral, equi- 
distant from the apex of the cross, and when they send out symmetric- 
al branches toward the fore limbs, the animal makes harmonious 
movements and is ambidexter, as the porpoise, the mole. 

When the emergences are again two, the left brachial unique 
and small, the right trifurcated for the brachial and for the two ce- 
phalic arteries, there are bouncing movements and war-instincts, as 
in the lion, the bear, the dog. A similar irregularity, with the ce- 
phalic arteries emerging nearer to the aorta, belongs to the wild 
boar. 

When the emergences are three, a central and a left one small, 
and the right one very large and quadrifurcated, there is a mixture 
of celerity and ferocity, as in the cat and some dogs ; or an awk- 
wardness in celerity, as in the giraffe and kangaroo. 

When the emergences are three, one right and one left for the 
brachial arteries, and a main cephalic regularly bifurcated, as in the 
elephant, the movements are harmonious, and the organ of prehen- 
sion and dexterity is central and unique : the proboscis is the hand. 
The same vascular apparatus, to which is added another horizontal 
bifurcation of the cephalic trunk, belongs to the more unruly rhinoce- 
ros. 

In man, as in the castor and chimpanzee, the emergences from 
the aorta are also three ; but in reality the right one, the largest, 
soon bifurcates to form the subclavian and the carotid of this side, 
as to re-establish a sort of symmetry between the systems of ar- 
terialization of both sides. Thus, in man, the canalization of the ar . 
terial blood toward the head appears as a composite of the various 
systems of circulation of the mammalia ; not so symmetric as in the 
horse and elephant ; not so asymmetric as in the wild boar or kang- 



33 

aroo, but yet irregular enough in the hematose of his two sides to 
make him one-sided (generally right-handed) in his movements, and 
sometimes more ferocious than is consistent with his pretensions to 
Christianity and philanthropy. It would result from this anatomical 
survey that the more asymmetric is the hematose, the more irregular 
will be the movements and the more bloody the instincts. 

What will physiologists tell us in their turn ? They present a 
more hopeful view of the case by demonstrating the action of educa- 
tion and of accoutltmance, not only on the hematose, but through 
the modified hematose, on the very form of the vessels through which 
it runs, and vice versa. The economists have proclaimed the half 
of a great truth when they said "The supply creates the demand." 
Physiologists may claim to have discovered the other half of this 
aphorism when we said, "The demand creates the supply." Thus 
completed, this whole truth will rule the reciprocal husbanding and 
economy of circulation and activity. Now, a greater supply of 
blood to the left hemisphere incites this hemisphere to more brain- 
work, and the right side of the body to more muscular work ; but let 
the training of the left side of the body call for more blood, and the 
right hemisphere will soon receive more blood and be better able to 
assist or supplement the left in brain-work. This is no hypothesis, 
but fact, since, in naturally left-handed persons, the arteries of the 
right side of the head, and those of the left side of the body, have 
been found to contain more blood than their opposite ; and in proof 
that not only the quantity of the hematose is affected, but also the 
form of the vessels, by certain modes of acti\ity, there are thousands 
of pathological specimens showing deformations of vessels produced 
in a very few years by the repetition of a movement, or by the con- 
stancy of a vicious attitude. 

15. Application to education. — From these facts, the fol- 
lowing conclusions are forced upon us : 

I St. The evidence that no system in our organism is so 
amenable as the circulatory system to primary diversity of structure 
and to secondary modifications, anomalies, even to anatomical mons- 
trosities, traceable to protracted exertions or attitudes. 

2nd. The inference that no other system of our organism is 
more modifiable by an early and well-planned training ; and that, if 
man can be rendered more serviceable as a worker, more harmonious 
in his movements, more delicate and thorough in his perceptions, 
and more kind and amiable in his family and social relations, it will, 
to a great extent, be through that part of physiological education 
which tends to equalize, on both sides of our hematose, the oxida- 
tion of the tissues and the evolution of heat by ustion, (from the 
Latin urere, to bum, complemented in combustion. — See the 
Manuals of Clinical Thermometry.) 

Therefore we cannot begin too early that equal education of 



34 

both sides of the body, which, to make an impression, must also be- 
come an accoiitiimance. 

The tendency already noted of the new-born to lie on the right 
side must be prudently corrected ; he has likewise to be carried in 
turns on the right and left arm ; and when he makes his first steps, 
he must be held by both hands alternately. Then come the dualist 
exercises of the senses, which may begin by the tact, since children 
dearly love to feel themselves touched and tickled on both sides. 
The exercises of alternately hearing and listening with each ear come 
at the same times ; so do those of changing the position of the child in 
relation to light, now to the left, then to the right, also horizontally 
to, or higher or lower than its angle of incidence ; both hands partic- 
ularly must be impartially educated to take hold and let go, to move 
at will or at command each articulation, exercises which differ from 
those to be farther described, only by their special reference to ambi- 
dexterity. By these means may be restored to our race an inexpen- 
sive power, more permanent then steam, and equally applicable to 
mental and physical labor ; a power, which, in many cases, can 
double the products, and which in all cases can save or economize 
the ordinary one-sided powers. By this restitution to our children 
of this natural capacity, many diseases and infirmities will become 
unknown or rare. For instance, the right hand would never become 
afflicted with the telegrapher's, seamstress's or writer's palsy, if the 
lett hand could hold the needle or the pen when the right hand is 
tired. Another consequence of the restoration of activity to the left 
side of the body would be an increased activity in the circulation 
and functions of the right hemisphere. This would induce equal or 
substitutive mental operations from both hemispheres, by which more 
continuous learning and thinking could be accomplished ; and the 
fatal consequences of excessive strain on the brain, hemorrhagy, 
embolism, and ramollissement would remain senile accidents instead 
of becoming the ironic rewards of young heroic efforts. And^ more- 
over, by this even education of the two side-organs, and by the more 
equal hematose of the two side-circulations, which would follow, the 
human temper and passions would be harmonized and subdued to 
a point, which the mind cannot, reach to-day, but whose social con- 
sequences cannot be overestimated. 

This is the part of the work to which anatomists and physiol- 
ogists invite the teachers. Not to repeat here my own appeals, and 
practice, which began with the first training of idiots, in 1837 — -Ty^ ; 
it seems but yesterday, that the lamented Agassiz urged his pupils of 
Penikeese Island to become ambidextrous, if they wanted te become 
good naturalists ; and * that my illustrious friend, Brown-Sequard, 
proclaimed at his Lowell course of lectures the equal training of both 
sides in our children as an urgent necessity. Since this was written, 
he delivered another lecture expressly bearing on this subject at the 



85 

Smithsonian Institution. No student of human nature can afford to 
ignore this beautiful conceps of his : Have ive two hrciins ? 
When he told me that he was to expatiate on this subject, I hasten- 
ed to treat it from my own stand-point; sure that if I heard him, my 
mind would be subdued by his, and my originality absorbed by his 
genius. 

This training, contrary to habits, tradition and heredity, must 
begin almost with life itself; if not in the cradle, in the infant-school 
at the latest. But to undertake it, it is necessary to understand the 
place it occupies in the general plan of physiological education ; 
there is a place for it in the series wfe have just surveyed, and prior 
to that, as we will presently show. 

We will not stop to describe the gymnastics, which particularly 
inure the bones and enlarge the muscles ; not only because their 
description is entirely foreign to this work of either minute analysis, 
or generalization, but because their operations appear, in our physiol- 
ogical plan, subordinate to those of the nervous system in this wise. 
The education of the muscular system is founded upon the nerve 
property to contract muscles ; of contractions to repeat themselves ; 
of repetitions to be amenable of rhythms ; of rhythms to incite imita- 
tion ; of imitation to provoke like movements in other people, or in 
the other side of the same body : a whole series of functions, con- 
tfactility, automatism, imitation, dualistic symmetry, which have to 
be developed to the rank of working capacities. 

Let us add to this the elements of the education of the senses ; 
the training of the faculty of speech ; that of the art of receiving, 
storing, and expressing impressions, which is the natural gift of in- 
fants ; and we will not need books to fill up the emptiness of our 
teaching, till the child is at least seven years old. 



CHAPTER V. 

Of The Senses. 

Seat of Sensation; Training of Special senses; Nature of impressions ; Teaching 
ivith play-thi7igs; Object-lessons; Training through physiological culture, 

1 6. Of Sensation. — The training of the special senses rests 
ex aequo with that of contractility, at the treshold of the infant- 
school. 

It should be said that a large place was given to it in the 
section of education at Vienna ; but it would give support to the 
dangerous opinion that "to educate through senses" is the same 
thing as "to educate the senses themselves". For though it cannot 
be denied that by the former process the senses are indirectly more 
or less improved, it is true, nevertheless, that they will hardly ever 
receive from it the accomplished powers of perception, and of trans- 
ference of images to the sensormm, which would accrue from a 
gradual and truly physiological training. If we needed a proof that 
the education of the senses has never been done — except by J. R. 
Pereire, for the special sense of hearing in the deaf-mutes ; by Haiiy 
for the sense of touch in the blmd ; by Itard, for the savage boy 
found in the forests of the Aveyron; and by some more recent 
teachers of idiots — unless empirically through object-lessons and 
automatic exercises — we would find this proof in the Welt-:^US- 
stellu/ig, where there were so many means by which the sense 
of sight' could be improved, and not a single one to be applied to 
the training of the sense of touch. This reservation bemg made, we 
acknowledge the quantity, variety, and value of the objects gathered 
to please and mstruct children through their senses, and to employ 
their activity by some hand-work or play. These objects could not 
be arranged, for the reason assigned above, in any order corres- 
ponding to each sense, nor to the ideal they satisfy in the child, as 
wonder, curiosity, imagination, and causality; but they were separ- 
ated as school-appliances and play-things (joujoux) ; and also by 
nationalities, the latter category offering occasion for curious remarks. 



37 

Before indulging in some of them, let us signalise a tact which 
dominates all others in the use of objects for educational purposes. 

When sensations penetrate through the peripheric nerves, they 
are directed sometimes by a self-impulse, and oftener by an external 
one (as a teacher) toward the sympathetic, or toward the brain ; 
and though these directions cannot be said to be absolutely exclusive 
one from the other, one of the two may be rendered so prevalent 
that it is physiologically true that in one case they are felt, and in 
the other they are reasoned. At this point of recipience of im- 
pressions, it is of the utmost importance, in order not to commit an 
irreparable mistake, to understand well the nature of the impressions 
to be made, and the psycho-physiological aptitude of a child to 
receive them. In regard to the nature of the impressions, some 
phenomena are better appreciated by our sensitiveness and others by 
our judgment. A child, misled in this, will hardly ever be able to 
retrace his steps in the right path, particularly if he has been direct- 
ed to reason what he ought to feel. 

In regard to the aptitudes of the child, his capacity for receiving 
sympathetic impressions is anterior to that for forming rational 
judgments; and if he is provoked to reason his impressions before 
he has been allowed to be sympathetically moved by them, his 
emotional apparel will be retrenched from the circulation of im- 
pressions ; and what may appear later as his own feelings will be 
others', implanted in his head, as he himself would plant cut flowers 
in sand and call the collection his garden. 

17. Object-lessons. — In the hope that these remarks will 
help us to comprehend how playthings act in education, let us nov/ 
speak of joujoux as the objects to give lessons be excellence. 

At first sight, such a vast array of playthings as was spread on 
the Prater left the impression of silly sameness. A second look dis- 
covered in them prrticular characters, as of national idiosyncrasies; 
and a closer examination showed that these puerilities had sense 
enough in them, not only to disclose the movements of the mind, 
but to predict what is to follow. 

The Chinese and Japenese toys are innumerable, as was to 
have been expected. They have in common a mingling with real 
life, and appear, at least to the writer — a barbarian — profoundly 
mortised into the system of education of both peoples ; so much so, 
that it seems impossible — for the same barbarian — to establish a 
line of demarcation between their playthings and their object- 
lessons, and particularly between the images made to cultivate 
hmnor, to excite interest, to spread ideas and criticisms, to educate 
directly through the accompanying text ; the whole forming a solid 
bulk of toys, preying on the mind, when pleasing the senses. In 
other respects, their toys are more unlike than we were prepared to 
find them. Taken in a block, how much brighter are the Japenese 



38 

toys ! Relieved in gold and the gaudy colors of the Breughels, their 
dolls, single, oftener grouped, are absolutely saucy, rollicking as on 
a spree of good humor and naughtiness ; but how much more sober 
in colors, meek in demeanor, and comprehensive in mien are the 
Chinese, who look so wise, and are willing to tell you all that their 
personal experience of sublunary troubles has taught them ! We 
have not often seen, in the Chinese toys, these mcitations to an 
awakening of curiosity for natural phenomena which characterise 
the Japenese. In this latter, the application of the natural and 
mechanical forces to produce a striking effect upon the imagination 
of children cannot fail to determine the taste of the next generation 
toward physical sciences. Meanwhile, the Chinese' favorite joujoux 
remain theatrical scenes, where the family is treated a la Moliere. 
If toys mean anything, these tell us that Peking is the Paris, and 
Yokohama will soon be the London or New York of the 
East. 

For fear that we may not find a more appropriate place, we 
will here confess a predilection for the material art of these eastern 
people in manufacturing things to be used by children. First, 
their play-books are of a paper whose tint does not offend the eye, 
and whose toughness resits ill-usage ; in book-form, but without 
stiffness; or in scroll-form, like the Jewish, they can be roughly 
handled among ruder playthings. Next, we profess a true enthu- 
siasm for the beauty, adherence, and softness of the colors and 
varnish employed in their book-toys, object-toys, animal-toys, 
human-toys, godly-toys ; and appreciate the more the fastness of 
their paint, when remembering to have in our infancy seen a brother, 
sister, and self tattooed with the colors of dolly ; or older, to have 
attended to children sick or dying from the ingestions of the poison- 
ous pigments of European toys. 

Persia, too, sent beautiful joujoux, from which can be inferred 
a national taste for music, since most of their dolls are blowing in 
some instruments. They stand in groups, like our itinerant German 
performers, but, unlike these latter, gorgeously dressed. 

Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, have sent no dolls. Do they make 
none, under the impression, correct in a low state of culture, that 
dolls for children become idols for men ? But Finlanders and Lap- 
landers, who are not troubled with such religious prejudices, give 
rosy cheeks and bodies as fat as seals to the dolls which teach their 
children how happy and healthy one may be in a paradise of ice 
and blubber. 

I looked in vain at Vienna for playthings of American manu- 
facture. Is it to say that all ours are imported ? certainly not. The 
American toys justify the rule we have found good elsewhere, that 
their character both reveals and prepares the national tendencies. 
Here, the toys refer the mind and habits of children to home econ- 



39 

omy, husbandry, and uiechanical labor ; and their very material is 
durable, mainly wood and iron. 

In wood are manufactured all the necessaries of miniature 
house-keeping : The wooden-buckets, chairs, sofas and other scroll- 
work are unequaled any where in delicacy of shape and freshness of 
color; and the tall pine, never before looked m the vastness of 
Michigan, must hear its pith ring for joy, under the stroke of the axe, 
which prepares its coming into thousands of new lives among lively 
children. But now, Connecticut and Nev\^ Jersey are already famed 
for their founderfes of pygmy stoves, safes, plows, presses, imple- 
ments, and electric or steam machineries, which by thousands are 
issued every afternoon froni the powdered charcoal floors. For 
ductility, softeness of contours, precision, and fire-colonng they^ 
defy all competition. Half a million worth of these toys has been 
exported in 1877 ; and their home consumption is valued at several 
millions of dollars. But this value is microscopic compared to the 
value of good habits which they inculcate in our children compared 
to the flimsy aspirations incubated by soldiers-toys, lev.-d dolls &c. of 
foreign manufacture. 

So, from childhood, every people has its sympathies expressed 
or suppressed, and set deeper in its flesh and blood than scholastic 
ideas. To make a long story short — for what a pretty and philosoph- 
ical book could be written on toys alone — let us now see those 
brought to the Danube from both sides of the Rhine. 

The French toy represents the versatility of the nation, touch- 
ing every topic, grave or grotesque, intentional agent of sympathetic, 
education. Paris was once the arsenal of infantile arms and armors ;. 
now from Berlin come the long trains of artillery, regiments of lead,, 
horse and foot, on mo\ing tramways ; but from, the Hartz and the 
Alps still issue these wooden herds, more characteristic of the dull 
feelings of their makers tha.n of the instincts of the animals they are 
intended for. France, no less true to her old love, has made dolls 
for the western world since Henry IV. brought them from Florence 
Yv'ith their persecuted and famished makers. But will she keep even 
that superiority with rulers who say they have not yet killed work- 
men enough — must make another sak/ne'e, &c. ? Her doll-makers 
were the initiators of fashion for the world. If they are killed or 
scattered, where will the genius of tast in handicraft settle ? 

This art of the artisan, a?'S vulgaris, possibly, not certainly 
inferior to, but more extensive than, the beaux-arts, is taught 
from the cradle, with toys at first, and by graduations commens- 
urate to the genius of childhood. The children who have no toys 
seize realities very late, and never from ideals. The nations rendered 
famous by their artists, artisans, and idealists have suppUed their 
infants with many toys ; and as there is more philosophy and poetry 

4 



in a single doll than in thousands of cherished books, let us see 
how this dispised thing, a doll, a toy, a joujoil, acts so important 
a part in human destinies. 

Toys are intermediate means of experience between the great 
realities of life and the smallness of the child. Things in general 
are so disproportionate to his stature, so far from his organs of pre- 
hension, so much above his horizontal line of \ision, so much 
ampler than his immediate surroundings, that there is, between him 
and all these big things, a gap to be filled only by a microcosm of 
playthings, which give him his first object-lessons. In proof of 
which let him see a lady richly dressed, he hardly notices her ; let 
him see a doll in similar attire, he will be ravished with ecstasy. As 
if to show that it was the disproportion of the sizes which unfitted 
him to notice the lady, the larger he grows the bigger he v/ants his 
toys, till, when his wish reaches to life-sizes, good-by to the trump- 
ery, and onward with realities. But before he reached this point, 
toys did him good servdce. We mean if they were oftered with due 
regard to his development ; if they were not at the outset prema- 
turely used to educate the senses ; and if the natural play of the 
child's emotional impressions had not been interfered with by peda- 
gogic reasonings. If these, and other like blunders of eagerness, 
blended with stupidity, have been avoided by the toy-givers, the 
infant will have received from his toys these affective emotions of 
pleasure or pain, of sense of harmony or discordance, of love or 
antipathy, which will characterize, as a baptism, his awakening 
moral-self, and his morality forever. 

And to obtain this incalculable boon, v/hat is needed ? Let 
him alone with his toys, and watch, and guess, if you can, by what 
inroads and outroads the communion between the doll and the child 
is accomplished. The fullness of heart, and thankfulness for a 
bright present, make room for the calmer sense of ownership which 
a child identifies with manual possession. He does not understand 
the idea of property, but feels It in his grasp ; he never experi- 
enced this feeling about his garments ; but the universe of children 
covet his toys, they shall not have them ; he grows serious. Once 
his possession assured, the child endows it with all the qualities of 
an ideal, and devotes himself to it as to a reality. True to this sym- 
pathetic conception — though his mind knows it to be false, he — 
who never before looked into the futnre — opens this blank book of 
human imagination, and writes on it all sorts of contingencies, of 
which the toy is the magic spring and center; if a dog, they go 
hunting together ; a cottage, it is filled with playmates ; a cart, it is 
made to run; a horse, to ride; a hen, to lay eggs; paper 
flowers, to blossom; wax fruit, to ripen; dolly won't learn, is pun- 
ished, gets sick, dies, has impressive funerals, &c. Softened by the 
diversity and sincerity of these emotions ; needing a partner in some 



41 

of these plays, and wishing to judge of others at a distance, the 
child relaxes his grasp, and consents, for love, sympathy, or other- 
wise, to let a brother play with his things ; the door of generosity is 
ajar, an opportune example of your own liberality, without ostenta- 
tion, will throw it wide open. Thus, this world of toys suscitates in 
the child a corresponding world of emotions and a cyclopedia of 
ideas. Take away the doll, you erase from the heart and head 
feelings, images, poetry, aspiration, experience, ready for applica- 
tion to real life. The Egyptians would not suffer the dead to retire 
forever without their dolls ; must we not be as merciful to our in- 
fants ? 

But soon, for our child, the plaything deteriorates, or, compared 
to newer ones loses its prestige ; is looked upon coldly, then skep- 
tically. What is it after all ? To form it, how do the pieces hold 
together ? And how is he to know but by taking them apart ? Away 
they go. The mystery is solved, but the poetry of the toy is gone. 

Now for the reality. Having learned by the destruction of his 
toy that thmgs are made of parts, he is ready to distinguish in objects 
their parts and properties, and to take analytical object-lessons. 
Here the teacher must bear in mmd that cramming with objects is 
as bad as with books. 

Before making some remarks on these lessons, this disquisition 
on toys must be excused upon the plea that they speak to the feel- 
ings when the mind is not yet open to reason ; that books cannot 
teach what toys inculcate ; that the nations who had the most toys 
had, too, more mdividuaiity, idealism, and heroism ; and that if you 
teil what your children play with, we can tell what sort of women 
and men they will be. Then let us have toys instead of books, in 
the Physiological Infant-Schooi ; and let this Republic soon make 
the toys which will raise the moral and artistic character of her 
children, as much as the toys of the South Americans have lower- 
ed their race by the substantiation of base, bigoted and bloody in- 
stincts. This is not all we have to say about toys, dolls, images ; 
but the rest will come more appropriately in another part. If we 
have helped to restore to playthings their place in education — a 
place which assigns them the principal part in the development 
of human sympathies — we can now put in the hands of children 
the objects whose impressions will reach their minds more particularly. 

In the Infant-School, object-lessons will present themselves 
under two aspects : that of studying and that of making objects. 

To study objects, is to observe their arrangement and their 
properties, as form, color, odor, movement; to learn their actual 
usage ; and to infer their possible applications. 

To make an object, is to select the parts, or attributes, which 
enter in it ; to put them in due rapport, and the whole in suitable 
or working order. 



One of these lessons complements the other ; they represent 
the Janus-aspect of our knowledge ; nothing is thoroughly known 
if not learned by that double process ; but double does not mean 
confounded ; the physiological teacher will keep them distinct, yet 
use them by apposition, because his aim is not only to give object- 
lessons, but to develop, now one function, now another ; primarily 
aiming at personal development, secondarily at knowledge. In the 
physiological school, the observation of objects will particularly be 
subservient to the training of the senses, and the vialcing of ob- 
jects will mainly be regulated by the wants of the hand to execute, 
and of the mind to conceive ideals ; therefore confusion between 
the two process becomes impossible. 

Such is, at this point, the programme of the infant physiological 
school. It embraces the direct and special training of each sense, 
and the reflex training of the mind, and of the creative activity 
through the senses. 

To unfold this curriculum, we shall be obliged somethnes to 
sacrifice the unity of its plan to the multiplicity of the details to be 
brought into relief. At other times we may not be able to forcibly 
mark, in their places, the mental connections of the plan ; for, as 
man is a unit, every part of him, or function of his, which we con- 
sider separately, by a modus loguendi, is intimately connected 
with all the others by the moduS vivendi, and the reader has to 
reunite what the writer has to dissect. In the present juncture, for 
instance, he will have to connect what has been said of the sympa- 
thetic — not as a regulator of nervous action between the viscera, but 
as a center of impressions as far back as the foetal period — with what 
he will have to say of the education of the senses. Another 
necessity of the subject will be, that, after explaining the elements 
of the education of the senses, and their bearing on the functions 
of the mind and of useful contractility, which properly belong to the 
infant-school, the force of the idea may oblige him to carry it into 
the special schools, where the teaching rests almost entirely on the 
training of one sense; in the primary, and sometimes into the 
higher and professional schools, in order to demonstrate how, from 
the cultivation of the roots — ganglia of the sensory nerves — branch, 
in all directions, skill and creative genius. 

Here must be brought prominently the idea already expressed, 
that one thing is to use the senses in education, and another, to edu- 
cate the senses, direcdy, singly or collectively. This distinction 
brings us back to the primogenial fact, that the Ancients were great 
masters in muscular gymnastics. It is but recently that the training 
of the senses has been made the aim and object of education. It 
was begun, not to improve the general education, but to fulfill 
special indications in the education of children afflicted with sen- 
sorial deficiencies, namely the deaf-mute, the blind, the idiot. To 



43 



-operate the transference of the methods, of training the senses 
of these unfortunates into the infant physiological school, we must 
iirst study these methods. 



44 



EDUCATION OF THE DEAF AND MUTE. 



Introduction. 

I^'chooh for the deaf and mute; Universal sympathy with the deaf and mute ; 
Instructing mutes ; History of the schools and methods. 

''La methode est la qualite dominante de recrivain 
fran9ais." Voltaire, (Essai sur Milton.) 

18. Schools. When we enter a school of blind children, we 
feel their irretrievable loss of sight, and, naturally enough, we at 
once try to make them touch what they cannot see. This move- 
ment is so direct and spontaneous, that one is surprised, upon reflec- 
tion, that it did not sooner lead to educational schemes, in which the 
touch, concent. . ted in the hand, would have taken the place of the 
regard (look) m their intellectual and professional training. But the 
question was not only one of physiology, viz, that of substituting 
one sense for another in the act of perceiving the outward world ; 
it was also one of progressive morality, by which men become more 
and more enlightened upon the point of their duty toward the 
unfortunate : a moral sense of more recent growth than many 
imagine ; since in Latin there is not even a single word to express 
the sense of humanity, the idea of being humane, and the like. 
But as soon as this moral sense began to be felt, it extended widely 
its sphere of action, and seems now incapable of being anaesthesied 
by egotism. 

Moved by the same feeling, when we visit a school of deaf 
and mute children, we are acted upon, however, by a different mode 
of sensory impressions. Unwillingly or unwittingly, we speak to 
them often quite aloud ; for, though we are aware of the cause and 
reality of their mutism, we cannot at once realize its irretrievableness. 
We perceive the silence of the deaf-mute, but we do not feel it fated 
in the irrevocable manner which strikes us in the cecity of the 
blmd ; because an inward warning makes us feel that surdity is a 
radical and primordial infirmity, which can be obviated by opening 
some other channel of perception of the speech instead of the lost 
hearing. 



45 

This secret intuition of the problem of the speech in the child, 
mute only in consequence of deafness, has preceded our actual 
knowledge on the subject, helped to acquire it, and has often sup- 
ported the failing hopes of the teachers and friends of the mute. 
To this consciousness is due the long series of trials — apparently- 
isolated by the old rule of the secret among savants — 
of P. Ponce, Bonnet, Wallis, Amman, Pereire, Heinicke; 
and now made public, according to modern ethics, by M. M. Hill, 
Hirsch, Saegert, Linnartz, Kratz, Cyrille, Van der Wielen, Buxton, 
Greenberger and Magnat ; Misses Hull, Rogers, Trask, and others. 

Hence the problem of instructing the deaf to speak has lost 
much of its natural difficulties by the progess of physiological educa- 
tion, and much of its mystery by the impartial history of the pre- 
cedmg schools, and by the frank exibition of the new methods and 
of their living results. However it would not be right to say that 
we have come to a consensus in that matter ? 

Among the schools which teach speech, there are yet discre- 
pancies mostly due to their origin, some tending to be smoothed 
away by free contact and discussion, others due to the inner genius 
of the different languages, and whose disappearance, to make room 
for a fallacious uniformity, would breed evil. But between these 
schools and those which pretend to express all ideas by pantomimes, 
there is no possible fusion ; it is all struggle ; there will be a \dctor 
and a victim ; one or the other must disappear by absorption. 
The contending parties are the schools of mutism, large, numerous, 
and supported by states or rich corporations ; and the schools of 
speech, which have fewer pupils, smaller endowments, and a staff 
whose support is principally the intelligent knowledge of their sub- 
ject and the heroism of their object. 

During almost a century, the schools of mutism opera.ted, and 
spread their methoch des sicjnes far and wide. Now, the schools 
of the speech begin to gain strength and ground in their turn. They 
have elucidated and improved their methods, and secured new 
locations, or conquered old ones, as Antwerp, Brussels, London, 
Geneva, Jacksonville, Groningen, Milan, Paris, Liverpool. From 
this we can see that the magnitude of the philosophical problem is 
equalled by the extent of the battle-field, and can foresee that the 
interests engaged therein will extend far beyond geographical limits. 

Our attention is first drawn to the respective positions and 
physiognomies of the schools of speech. There vv-ere three of them : 
the Hollando-German, the Spanish-French, and the Anglo-Ameri- 
can, each tvrinlike. 

The origin of the first two is enrobed in that secrecy which was 
the dress of sciences in former times, and which nov,- renders it diffi- 
cult to retrace the delineations of their infancy. But now the three 
schools are almost equally vested with the radia.nce of publicity, 



46 

which permits us to see and describe their actual form, gait and 
tendency. Therefore we are allowed to represent to our own mind 
these fair creations of other minds as coming out from obscure 
grottoes inwardly connected, whose march is parallel rather than 
divergent, with a marked tendency to converge toward a brighter 
point, which the eye can already determine ahead, where the three 
will soon form a strong and harmonious group. When arrived there, 
these schools will have conquered the future of the physiological 
method of teaching deaf and dumb children to speak, and, through 
the fullness of the written and spoken language, of educating them 
like other children. 



47 



CHAPTER I. 

The Hollando- German School. 

History ; Extent and character of this school; Success of the method; Collective 
Teaching; Conclusion. 

19. History. About the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, Dr. Amman published, in Amsterdam, his two treatises ^'Sur- 
dus Log liens'' 2.n<l '' Dissertatio de Loquela^ by which he let 
men know that he was capable of teaching the deaf and mute to 
speak, but m which he says very little about his method of doing it. 
On this subject, Dr. Hirsch, of Rotterdam, says, in his ''Souvenirs'', 
p. 51 : "If we ask what Amman was doing to give speech to his 
pupils, how he was developing their minds and hearts, how he 
applied the speech to other teachings, we find these books absolutely 
mute." In consequence of the law of secrecy prevalent at his 
time, Amman left neither school nor disciple, but the mother-idea, 
which Heinicke seized upon at the call of Buftbn. But Heinicke 
himself published no method, and left only the pupils who had 
helped him in his school of Leipsic. Those initiated teachers began 
only after his death to disseminate his ideas, from which, by free 
discussion and open practice, our contemporaries have disengaged 
and embodied the principles of the Hollando- German school. This 
school is now represented by four veterans, whom we shall name 
in token of respect, by rank of seniority : Hill, of Weissenfels ; 
Hirsch, of Rotterdam ; Janke, of Dresden ; and Saegert, of Berlin, 
and by many other talented men, whose names ought to have their 
place here, as connected with some improvement of the theory or 
practice of their art. 

20. Extent. This school teaches speech to hundreds of mute 
children, from Zurich to Vienna, from Breslau to Cologne, from 
Konigsberg to Brussels, and even in England and America. (We have 
a branch of it in Broadway, New York.) It may be characterized by 
its dominant feature, which is the simplest means of classifying 
methods. We found that the dominant feature of the HoUando- 
German school of teaching speech is "imitation". Imitation is not 
its only means ; it is its principal means, the one by which, there- 
fore, it may be represented as a school, and difterentiated from 
others. 

This character is pretty well defined in the institution of Lieg- 



48 

nitz. This school looks poor enough, but is supplied with five com- 
petent teachers for eighteen girls and thirty-two boys. The director, 
Mr. Kratz, takes hold of the new-comers, and teaches them at 
once to speak, mainly by imitation, without forgetting to communi- 
cate to their hands during the lesson the powerful vibrations of his 
chest. "When I have thus given them a feeling of what the emis- 
sion of the voice must be, with a certain amount of practice, any 
one of my teachers is good enough for them," says M. Kratz. It 
is by this faith in his method and by his devotion to his pupils that 
he holds the first rank in his school, chief in the labor as well as 
ofiicial head ; no ccnjjut movtuuni- The same eager interest is 
observable in M. Linartz, director of the school of Aix-la-Chapelle^ 
and in others also. 

I have said that immitation is the main character of the 
Hollando- German method ; we must now observe the changes or 
modifications this method undergoes, without ceasing to be itself, 
when passing in its application from one institution to another ; from 
Liegnitz to Brussels, for instance. 

M. Kratz commences the teaching of speech by the guttural 
sounds ; by those whose origin is the more internal or deepest. 
Brother Cyrille, of Brussels, commences by the labials, whose sounds 
are of the most outward formation ; progressing from the dentals 
and palatals inward and downward. Can the cause of this inversion 
of processes in the same method be, that the French language, 
taught by the latter teacher, is altogether more spoken by the 
external organs than the German ? Facing this problem, the writer 
felt quite unable to solve it. How much we desired- in particular 
to appreciate the modifications the method undergoes, when in 
practice it passes from the school of the Frere Cyrille in Brussels to 
that of brother Van der Wielen in Antwerp ; both masters educated 
at the school of M. Hirsch, of Rotterdam, but one teaching his 
pupils to speak in French, the other in Flemish. Here we were at 
the intersecting point of the guttural languages of the north and 
of the middle-buccal ones of Central Europe, and, by mere ignor- 
ance, were denied the satisfaction of solving this fine complicated 
problem of philology, physiology, and education. All that we could 
seize of it is, if we are not mistaken, that, ist, The exercises 
of speech, as we heard them made in French and in Flemish — later 
in German — seemed to act differently on the chest; 2d, The more 
the voice taught to the mute is guttural, the more the chest expands 
in ils exercise; 3d, The teaching begun by, or longer persisted in 
the gutturals, gives the children a stronger but rather harsh voice ; 
4th, The children who exercise their chest the most look hardier and 
stronger than those who do it less; so m the same ratio are they 
more free of pythisis and insidious pheumonia, which in the schools. 
of mutisni are the wolf in the sheepfold. 



49 

2 1. Success of the method. In the Hollando- German 
school all the children learn to speak, and do speak, except the few 
whose organs of speech are paralyzed, and those who being idiots 
besides, could no more be taught by the method of signs or by 
writing alone. But the percentage of true idiocy is not larger among 
the deaf-mutes than among ordinary children, and paralysis of the 
organs of speech is generally consequent upon infantile convulsions 
and has no necessary connection with the organic causes 
of surdi-mutity. "It is demonstrated", said Dr. Matthias, of Fried- 
berg, in 1858, "that the vices of the vocal organs are no more fre- 
quent in the deaf than in the hearing child; the organ of audition 
being entirely independent of the orga,ns of speech, which, if found 
stiffened, are rendered so by inaction." IvI. Saegert had already 
stated, in 1856, in his remarkable Report on the instruction of deaf 
and mute children, that "ninety-nine out of a hundred of these 
children have well-formed organs of speech-; they will learn to 
speak, if their sight is good and their touch delicate ; the more or 
less probability of success depends entirely upon the capacity of 
their teachers." Since these men of great authority have pro- 
nounced their judgment, after long professorships, or inspections, 
the practice of more than forty schools has confirmed their conclu- 
sions. In all the Hollando-German schools, instruction is communi- 
cated in the national language, written or spoken ; the language of 
signs and the manual alphabet being excluded. M. W. Hirsch, the 
apostle of the Dutch schools, was never tired of saying, where he 
surperseded the signs by the voice, in Liege, Brussels, &c., that 
"the worst methods are the mixed ones." 

Under such mas' ers, the practice of teaching speech is every- 
where extremely simple. The most competent teacher takes the 
new pupils, as has been stated, one by one, two by two, and soon 
more at a time ; and placing himself before a strong light in good 
conditions of directness, horizontality, attention, and mutual desire 
of doing well, he shows them how he moves, and how he can dis- 
place at will the organs which are used m articulation ; how he in- 
spires and expires at vvill great volumes of air, which will soon be 
rendered strident by vibrations, which produce the vocal sounds. 
This first part of the study is intrusted to the sight ; the child imi- 
tates vrhat he sees. AVhen the articular movements aie thus made 
easy, and when the silent air is harmoniously expired in useful quan- 
tities, the vibrations of the sonorous voice have to be demonstrated. 
This dem.onstration can hardly be made by the sight, because it 
takes place in such cavities as the eye cannot reach. It is then, 
therefore, that the touch of the child must have been trained, and 
ought to be ready to perceive the \-ibrations of the organs in the act 
of speech, so that he can imitate them ; and imitating the several 
vibrations he cannot fail to utter the identical sounds they give rise 



50 

to ; that is to say, he speaks. Thus are acquired, ahnost separately, 
the three elements : position of the parts, expiration of air, and the 
muscular vibration ; the result, necessarily, is speech. We say 
necessarily, since the slightest change in one of these three factors 
unavoidably modifies either the articulation, the volume, or the thrill 
of the voice. This reunion, or harmonious melting of these fac- 
tors of the speech, position, expiration, vibration, is the key to the 
teaching of the language. At this important point, whatever be the 
method in use, the teacher ov/es great attention to his task ; for he 
will meet there, as in the subsoil upon whicli he intends to raise a 
monument, many individual particularities (idiosyncrasies), which 
practice alone finds out, and personal combat eradicates. 

2 2. Collective teaching. — The intimate character of this 
teaching permitted the friends and professors of mutism to spread 
the scarecrow idea that, to teach the deaf to speak, as many teach- 
ers as scholars were needed. They were simply calumniating a 
theory to do away with a reproachful practice. The truth is, that 
after this initial period, the theory and practice of the art, though 
yet somewhat discrepant in different schools, have this in common, 
that, after the elements of the speech have been severally produced 
and corrected, the sum, synthesis, or spoken language may be and 
is actually taught — shall we say — collectively, or, using a pleonastic 
expression, by a single teacher to a group of children. This collec- 
tive teaching is so well classified in Holland and Germany that the 
composition and the form of the groups are almost stereotyped by 
experience. The group is a class of speech, if you please to call it 
so, but it is more than that on account of its elliptic shape. The 
master, standing at the head of an oval table, faces the light, and 
the children, standing too, surround the table, all looking into his 
mouth. There may be six, eight, or many more in the group. The 
less experienced stand directly opposite the master, and, gradually 
making room for new-comers, they stand aside to learn also to read 
the speech upon its most external and lateral, muscular movements. 

Besides, this collective teaching of the speech soon becomes 
interwoven with those of writing and reading, with lessons on draw- 
ings and objects, and other educational matters, in the order in which 
they are presented to ordinary children. In this manner, speech 
becomes, concurrently with writing, the ordinary form of teaching; 
otherwise illustrated by examples, drawings, figures, as circumstance 
brings them forth. It has been said that this was the uniform prac- 
tice ; for indeed we cannot call two improvements, to be found in 
the northern schools, "diversitties of method." One is the series of 
admirable drawings of M. Hill, of Weissenfels, in which every car- 
toon represents familiar objects, grouped according to the order of 
organs moved to pronounce their names, and which help so much 
in the lessons of speech that they can be found even in the Ameri- 



51 

can schools for idiots ; the second improvement is the pamting o 
all the tables and the accessible part of the walls, as blackboards^ 
on which to -sATite and to rub out, as ideas fly, the incidental 
teaching. 

23. Conclusion. — A few remarks, apparently disconnected, 
but really united into the main body of principles, are yet necessary 
to complement the impression made by the Hollando-German, 
school. I will express them as they come to my mind, without 
pretense to a systematic arrangement. 

In this thickly populated and parsimonious country, the 
schools for the deaf and for the blind are sometimes contiguous, and 
managed by the sanie director. This plan serves several purposes. 
For instance, under it the two classes of invalids are rendered capa- 
ble of helping each other. This reciprocity of offices may serve, 
under skillful management, to create among them bonds of affec- 
tion, and to create a moral sense in children said to be made selfish 
by isolation. Moreover, the number of servants is diminished and 
tne number of efficient teachers increased in the same ratio. For 
the same reason of economy, idiots are sometimes located, but not 
confounded or mixed with the deaf-mutes, as at Liegnitz. 

For economical and moral reasons, in Germany, the tendency 
is to substitute, as much as possible, the externat for the internat ; 
to open many small day-schools in lieu of vast barracks, where the 
natural feelings of youth are trampled upon by a mechanical dis- 
cipline which invites hypocrisy or revolt ; day-schools which accus- 
tom the children, after training-hours, to habits of labor, to help 
their parents, (which is good training too.) and to enjoy their home 
and natural society, v/hich constitute by themselves a strong and 
practical education. In Holland, particularly, the children are in- 
variably occupied between school-hours at some simple and useful 
work ; later on, they are kept only a few hours daily in the institu- 
tion, and are supplied with occupation or apprenticeship outside ; 
so that, when their education is finished, the pupils have not only 
acquired capacities conformable to their taste and station, but which 
is more precious, they have formed previous associations in the world 
in which they will soon enter, not like strangers and awkward 
cripples, but as old acquaintances, or mates with whom the people 
are used to speak and labor. Almost anywhere in Germany, and all 
over Holland, the deaf children of both sexes are educated together. 
This creates an emulation v/hich makes the school attractive, and 
stimulates the pupils to advancement, particularly in speech. There 
and thus begin these appreciations of each other, true, because they 
are immediate, direct, and quotidian ; there also are bom those 
reciprocal feelings, some friendly, some more intimate, which, 
helped by full interchange of ideas, become so pleasing or useful in 
after life, and lay the foundations of future happiness. 



On the western banks of the Escaut it is difterent. In Belgium, 
the policy whose task it is to place between woman and man a 
priest or a devil — sometimes both in one — has everywhere separated 
the sexes, even where sex does not yet exist, and, moreover, where 
nature had already sequestrated the individuals by the double parti- 
tion of dumbness and deafness. The instructors of the mute, whom 
we have seen there, and whom we have named with due honor, are 
the pioneers of the work, and as such, are full of a holy enthusiasm, 
and have developed, with rare intelligence, qualities almost maternal. 
Such are all beginners. But after these devoted men, there will 
follow as usual the ambitious, the indifferent, the needy, the poor of 
mind, the rich of bestiahty, in which the dryness of heart of a uni- 
sexual existence leaves room for a satyriasis contagious among chil- 
dren educated in unnatural conditions. 

Giving a last look at the prosperous school we have just studied, 
we remark that the same influence which deprives children in Belgi- 
um of their natural companions, deprives them in Germany, niore 
generally than in Holland, of their natural teachers — who are females, 
of course — particularly as teachers of speech. This practical blunder 
can better be explained by traditional habits than by wrong judg- 
ment or ignorance ; since the Germans know that the Americans 
employ on the largest scale, and with the most marked success, the 
educational capacities of women, capacities recognized to be far above 
those of men, where technical teaching does not require energy, nor 
the art muscle. But I must not appear to forget that, next to the great 
school of Dresden, where one hundred and twelve young ladies and 
young men are learning to speak, and where they receive the most 
thorough education, the director of this school, M. Jank§, has al- 
ready founded for very young deaf and mute children, an institudon, 
whose name alone reveals the inspiring idea and insures the success — 

the FiliaU ! 

The Flliale is a pretty residence, of moderate dimensions, 
where thirty-four children, of both sexes, (age three to nine.) are in- 
trusted to three married couples, who treat them like their own ; they 
live with them, and teach them mainly to speak during and about 
the most trivial circumstances of home-life ; indeed, at any oppor- 
tune moment. A cheerful house, trees, flowers, living birds and 
fishes, playthings, and maternal cares — such is the Filicile. Other 
leaders of the same school present a similar example. AX. the insti- 
gation of M. Hirsch, several Dutch teachers of the mute have cross- 
ed the Channel, and one of them, M. W. Van Praagh, has opened 
in London a school where these children will be treated as at home — 
a FamiUale, as M. Janke would say. There, speech will be taught 
after the Hollando-German method, next to, or in combination with 
the new English School. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Spanish-French School. 

History; Pereire-s viethod; Opjjositioii to Pereire. 

24. History. The history of the Spanish school opens with 
the revered name of Pons, and the book of Bonnet, (1620.) What 
remains of this antique tradition is this : Bonnet published the 
Spanish manual alphabet, gave a theory of the order in which the 
syllables ought to be taught, and suggested the use of a flexible 
leather tongue to imitate the positions of the living tongue in the 
act of speaking. 

More recently, Hernandez proposed to use images representing 
the various positions of the organs of speech, while Hervas pro- 
posed to employ a vertical section of the head and neck of the 
body to show in action the passages which articulated sounds 
follow, and the movements of the innermost organs. 

At the exhibition of Arragon in 1868, the school of Madrid 
produced photographic charts representing the organs of speech in 
the act of pronouncing each sound ; and at the universal exhibition 
of Vienna, Don Carlos Nebreda y Lopez, director of the same 
school, presented a report on the combined teaching of the blind, 
deaf and mute children, and a treatise on the art of teaching the 
latter to speak. This book is remarkable for a series of Hthographs 
representing the external positions of the speech, and besides for 
the dotting of the course of the sonorous air trom the larynx out, to 
form the various sounds. I was shown also the same lithographs 
rolled at the foot of a mirror, so that the pupil unrolling them can 
study alone and rehearse every position. He has thus at once 
several terms of comparison : the letter written, and figured with 
the hand alphabet ; the image of the movements he must imitate ; 
the track to be followed by the sonorous air through his own 
organs ; his own image in the looking-glass, to be compared to the 
lithograph below, and the tactile impressions received from his 
voice passing from the depth of the ca\ity to one or the other issue 
of the speech. This mode of self-learning, in the interval of the 
formal lessons must be valuable, particularly where the children are 
many, and the school poor. 

But Don Lopez has also exhibited in Vienna his pupil Martin 
de Martin y Ruiz, deaf and dumb from birth, and completely blind 



54 

from the age of two years ; he is nov/ eighteen. The education of 
this lad was commenced in 1869, and now, after four years, he 
speaks, reads, and writes. He understands the questions of moral 
and of personal hygiene I know, and those of religion, as I was 
told. He is well read in grammar, geography, natural history, 
arithmetic^ and geometry. To make my acquaintance, he pro- 
ceeded as he would have done to take knowledge of the problem 
of the hypothenuse with the solid forms of his school ; he measured, 
first, my thickness from sternum to spine, using the two hands like 
the extremities of the branches of a compass, then, with one hand 
he followed my chest and arms, when v/ith the other, having 
reached the occiput, delicately as a girl he touched the contours of 
my face and carefully mapped out the barren field of my calvity, 
like a land-surveyor. He knew my out-hnes henceforth, recognized 
me, and became quite aftectionate. 

The method made use of for him puts in relief the advantage 
of uniting in the same locality and under the same leading spirit the 
school for the blind with the one for the deaf and mute, as the 
French Republic had done in 1794. Thanks to this combination of 
means, Martin Ruiz learned the spoken language with the deaf, 
and the written one with the blind. All his instruction was com- 
pleted by his alternate passages from one of those schools to the 
other, in the same establishment ; and he succeeded likely because 
both were al'ke home for him. This young man is in himself very 
interesting by his kind feelings, the quickness of his perceptions, 
the vivacity of his emotions, and also for the an American inniClllO- 
riam of Laura Bridgniin. 

The result of this too short review of the actual labors of the 
Spaniards, at the very cradle of the art of teaching the mute to 
speak, is, that they religiously keep alive the sacred flambeau. In 
the iTiean time, however, the art had passed the Pyrenees with Jacob 
Rodrigues Pereire; from Spanish, becoming naturalized French, 
with and like himself 

In 1734., Pereire, hardly nineteen, was already gathering the 
scientific materials on this subject. What cause could have impelled 
so young a man in such a difficult undertaking ? ^^L'amitU et la 
communication (V line perso/ine muette lui ont susciU cette 
id^e.'' He does not say more; but it is easy to comprehend that, 
without this friendship and communication, Pereire could never have 
instituted the experiments upon which he founded his method. 

In 1745, he produced, before the Academy of La Rochelle 
Baron Beauman, who was not his first deaf-speaking pupil ; and in 
1746, before the academy of Caen his pupil d'Etavigny, born deaf- 
mute but speaking at this time. 

In 1749, and in 1751, having removed his school from Bordeaux, 
to Paris, he presented his pupils to the Academy of Sciences. 



55 

The academic commission composed of Mairan, Buftbn, Fer- 
rein, made two reports, which are to-day historical documents. To 
be short, I will give only the concluding lines of the second : 
"Cet expose fait voir que M . Fereire a un talent singulier pour appren- 
dre a parler et a lire aux sourds et muets de naissance ; que la me- 
thode dont il se sert doit etre excellente ; les enfants qui ont tous 
leur sens ne faisant pas communement autant de progres dans un si 
petit espace de temps. * * * Cela suffit pour confirmer le 
jugement que nous fimes dans notre rapport du mois de juillet 1749; 
et pour faire sentir que sa methode d'instruire les muets ne peut etre 
que tres-ingenieuse, que son usage interesse le bien publique, et 
qu'on ne saurait trop encourager celui qui s'en sert avec, tant de suc- 
ces. Signe : Mairan, Buftbn, Ferrein." 

These commissioners of the Academy, whose moral sense was 
likely as keen as is our, did not deprecate aud revile him, as others 
have smce done, because he showed them the results of his method, 
but kept his method as his own. They concluded, from what they 
had seen, that "the method must be excellent, and that the one w^ho 
applied it with so much success could not be too much encouraged." 
They did more : they permitted the reprint, en suite of their report, 
of a note of his, in which the schoolmaster offers his services to the 
families who have deaf and mute children : a would-be departure 
from an unborn morality which cannot fail to excite the contempt 
of the society that leaves in penury the children of Daguerre, who 
gave the world photography. 

But is it true that Pereire kept upon his method the absolute 
secret upon which rose such reprobation ? * 

Before Duverney had published his superb Anatomy of the Ear, 
Lecat his Physiology of the Senses, and nobody a Treatise of Otolo- 
gy, Pereire had distinguished the deaf-mute proper (that is those 
made mute by their deafness) from the children rendered mute by 
the ill-formation of the organs of speech, or by local paralysis subse- 
quent to infantile convulsions, or by idiocy and imbecility, a difteren- 
tiation which requires yet a good diagnostician, (p. 224.) 

Having thus set apart "the mutes which were the objects of his 
art," he divided them into three categories, which are yet classical: 
the deaf absolutely dumb, who are the less common ; the half-dumb, 
who understand the loud noises, and voices even, but without dis- 
tinguishing their sound, who form the larger class ; and those quarter- 
deafs who distinguish some voices, and thereby have acquired some 
idea of language. This third class would be the more numerous, 
if it were not early reduced by death from many infantile diseases 
and constitutional aftections, (p. 226.) These categories w^ere made 
the base of his teaching: 

(* See for the following quotations : "Notice of Jacob Rodrigues Pereire," 
by E. Seguin, in 12, at G. Bailliere, Paris, 1847. (^) 



56 

To those who heard nothing, the complete method, and partic - 
ularly the most thorough substitution of the tact to audition. 

To those mutes who, like Saboureux, showed a difficulty of 
articulation, the teaching was made more particularly in writmg and 
through the dactylology — in which, however, every particular 
position of the fingers indicated the disposition and action of the 
organs necessary to produce a sound, together with the characters 
or letters representing these sounds, according to usual orthography, 
(p. 269.) 

To those who heard the sounds in various degrees, Pereire com- 
pared their sensations of hearing with the ones we could experience 
from the sight, if several thicknesses of fine gauze were placed be- 
tween our eyes and the objects ; in which hypothesis the number of 
gauzes would correspond to the divers grades of surdity, (p. 259.) 
For the education of this class, Pereire managed various gymnast- 
ics of the auditory apparatus, by which he succeeded in "making 
them distinguish, even without the help of sight, a variable number 
of articulated words, and some of them became able to extend this 
knowledge to all the words"; (p. 257.) Since this was written, I have 
found that Pereire used electricity as a means of cultivating a defect- 
ive audition as early as 1753, but I could not make out with what 
results. 

25. Pereire's Method. Let us come now to his method 
proper of teaching the mute to speak. 

It is quite certain that Pereire, like the other teachers of the 
dumb, substituted vision for audition, and with it used the 
resources of imitation, as well as did the Spaniards, the Dutch, and 
the Germans. But we must look elsewhere, and mainly in his 
reticences, to find out the very core, or principium of the method 
v/hich he founded, and which he thought he had a right to transmit 
to his children, as an intellectual heirloom. 

We will find it in the stimulus which lightened his task, and 
moved him onward during forty-six years. "The friendship and the 
communication of a mute person suggested to him that idea," and 
we must add, for the full comprehension of the problem, that this 
same amity allowed him to continue and to co-ordinate the experi- 
ments, which he could never have begun without this friendly com- 
munication. — Is not woman at the bottom of any good accomplished 
by man ? . . . . What ! will some one say, was it experiments of 
touch ; and was Pereire trying to substitute the sense of touch for the 
lost sense of hearing ? Precisely. Pereire, often discontented with the 
services rendered by sight in the reading from the lips and speech, 
as taught by the authors, undertook a long series of experiments 
which a dear reciprocal feeling could only make and undergo ; and 
adding to the results of these experiments those of observations, 
taken upon a great many deaf and mute persons, and particularly 



57 

upon babies, he founded his method upon this experience, as novel 
as it was extensive, (from 1734 to 1749). 

But I had better allow him to develop the same idea in that 
peculiar and clever style which makes the loss of his other writings 
doubly felt. 

"All deaf and mute children, not excepting those of the first 
category, form, of themselves, some cries and articulated sounds 
more or less distinct ; a natural ability often very useful. One can 
understand how children who have no idea of sonorous voices can, 
nevertheless, form some of them, and use them quite correctly in an 
emergency, if one reflects that they do not need more than any other 
children to learn how to cry when new born, and in the following 
months to emit a few articulated sounds. To that effect, the babies 
need not h'jar ; it is sufficient for them to imitate certain dispositions 
of the organs, which they can readily perceive in other persons by 
touch and sight, and whose circumstantial occurrences soon 
reveal to them the meaning and the opportunity. For surdity, 
of whatever degree, cannot prevent a child from feeling Oil the 
bosom of his nurse the vibrations caused in the cavity of 
the chest by the emission of the voice, nor fi-om noticing the 
movements of the lips, which are invariably concomitant to the exit 
of the speech. 

'•And, moreover, the more a child is dumb, the better able 
will he be to feel early these effects of the voice foreign to his 

hearing These considerations led me to think that several 

deaf and mute children, who are thought to have lost their hearing 
by accident, because they have been heard pronouncing at first more 
words and more distinctly than afterward, are, nevertheless, dumb- 
born children, who, when quitting the arm upon which they were 
first carried, forgot in part, or in toto, what they had learned by 
the touch on the chest of their nurse, and retain of their former baby- 
speech, only the articulations which are perceived by sight. 
I also believe that it is equally by the concourse of touch (besides 
sight and hearing) that ordinary children learn the first words 
or semi- words which they utter; and that, being yet incapa- 
ble of the steady application of mind which reflective imitation de- 
mands, they would remain speechless longer, if those who live with 
them did not show their faces, did not carry them, nor enter into other 
contacts with them when speaking. Thus — and this is a new and 
surprising fact — the deaf and mute children perceive the speech by 
the touch. This sensation takes place when, speaking to the dumb, 
one brings his mouth in contact with the ear, face, or other sensitive 
part of the body, like the hand. Then the air which forms the 
speech communicates to these parts impressions as frequent and 
distinct as the syllables themselves, vibrations which are sufficient 
without any other means, to give a clear perception of several articu- 



58 

lations. So it remains demonstrated, as per the example of the 
young d'Etavigny, (before the commission of the Academy of the 
Sciences,) that the deaf of the first category — that is to say, perfectly 
dumb — will be able to distinguish some words by this process. 

"The mutes of the second class are capable of acquiring 

more of this knowledge than those of the first 

According to my experience, the deaf of the third category who are 
able to distinguish differences between the vowels are the only ones 
who can be trained to hear with the ear, [auriculairement.y 

After the enunciation of these principles, Pereire concluded his 
communications to the academy by affirming before the commis- 
sioners Mairan, Buffon and Ferrein, his witnesses and sponsors since 
1749, that "he, Pereire, was the first who had found out the means 
of using, not only w^hat was left of audition in a great many, but the 
tact of the deaf and mute children, to give them the use and intel- 
ligence of the language," (pp. 278-284.) And this in virtue of the 
law which he gave in advance of contemporary physiologists, "Tous 
les sens accomplissent leur function en vertu d'un toucher plus ou 
moins modifie," (p. 185.) 

The discovery of Pereire, considered here only as an educator, 
consists, therefore, in the application of this law to the teaching of 
the children rendered mute by deafness, and in substituting to audi- 
tion other modes of tactility, particularly the immediate contact {^U 
toucher immediat.) It consists also in the physiological education 
of the sense of hearing in the children of the third category, who 
naturally distinguish some vowels. There is the secret so well hidden. - 
We have it written by Pereire himself in the Comptes re/ulus de 
VAcademie des sciences, [Memoirs de savcuits Hrangers 
5th vol.,) more clearly and much more explicitly presented than 
here. In this fifth volume, the dactylology is explained as one of 
the instruments of instruction for the mute, a means of communica- 
tion of speech during its first apprenticeship ; another to represent 
and recall all the positions of the organs during the lessons of artic- 
ulation ; a last resort, to express themselves for those unable to speuk 
freely, from whichever cause among those above enumerated. The 
dactylology of Pereire was also a language (by touch) for the mute 
in obscurity, or in company when willing to communicate secretely 
with a friend in a crowd. Used largely in this wise at school, 
and even by the parents of the pupils, it suggested to Saboureux 
the idea that the blind too could be taught by the touch, (p. 267;) 
a suggestion repeated ten yer.rs later by the Abbe de I'Epee, and 
since carried out by Hatiy. "The dactylology w^as able to express 
also mathematics, music, the rhythms of poetry, and the accents of 
oratory and of the human passions," (p. 266.) 

The speech was taught by imitation, with vision as a guide 
of the internal positions in the mouth and external muscles of the 



59 

face and neck; and for the first known time with the touch, conductor, 
and monitor of the innermost positions, and of the organic vibrations 
which concur in the emission of sonorous articulation. By this 
method, the mute from deafness, of an ordinary capacity, could 
learn to speak in twelve or fifteen months. 

How did Pereire attain this result ? 

By observation upon nature, with no other parti pris than 
the intense desire to do good, first upon and for a beloved woman, 
then on dear mute children, even in the arms of their mothers. That 
is the reason why the author of the best "Physiology of the Senses," 
Lecat, admired Pereire ; the father of Emile and of Eloise visited 
him like a friendly neighbor ; and Buffon opened, to his name and to 
liis work, a page of his immortal Histoire naturdU (U Vlwmme. 

26. But, alas ! that is the reason why the priests of Caen, 
Bailleul, and Cazeaux, the fathers Vannin and Andre in Paris, in 
Orleans the Abbe Deschamps, and later the Abbe de I'Epee and 
his sequel, hunted him unrelentingly, clamoring for his method — that 
is to say, his own arms — to beat hnii with them, in the name of 
humanity. And what answer does Pereire give to those claims, well 
concentrated in the acrid charity of the book of the '^Institution 
des SOlirds et muets, etc-" ? He visits the rival school, and seeing 
the gesticulations which go by the name of langudQe des sicjnes 
mUhodigiies, mildly said : "I could not believe it, if I had not seen 
it, sir; you have, like the Chinese, as many signs as there are words." 
The truth was yet lower than this criticism. To his friends, express- 
ing disgust for the anonymous attacks, he answered, "I will be mis- 
taken if, whatever may be the self-love of the author, his religion 
does not soon make him feel how wrong he has acted toward me." 

This said, he left for Bordeaux, to die where he had begun ; 
dying, indeed, without completing this last sentence, which must be 
read by the light of the unjust assaults of his rivals : "Praying the 
Almighty God to inspire my heart with feelings of justice 



60 



CHAPTER III. 
The Abbe de I'Epee and his Time. 

Historical sketch; Theory and j^Tactice; Consequences. 

27. Historical Sketch. The Abbe de I'Epee began quite 
late in life to instruct deaf and mute children. He was rounding 
his sixties in 1770, when he opened to them his house of the Rue 
des Moulins, near the school of Pereire, already old and famous, in 
rue de la Platriere. However, he then knew neither Pereire,* 
Amman, nor Bonnet, and entered a career, to him, absolutely un- 
trodden, {Institlitioih <^c , part i, page 9.) But at the start, his 
charity, even without tradition, was a good guide. 

He resolved at once that, what the deaf cannot understand 
must be shown. "Have we but one sense? Or can the failing of 
one be supplied by the ministry of another?" (i, 26;) and as a 
corollary : "The only means to render deaf-mute children useful to 
society is to teach them to hear with their eyes, and to expi^ss 
themselves — de vive voix — with their voices," (1,155.) Then he 
adds : /'The deaf and mute can speak Hke us, when they are in- 
structed," (2,56.) "To teach the mute how to dispose his organs to 
emit voices, and form distinct speech, is an operation neither long 
nor painful. Three or four lessons advance this business very much, 
if they do not thoroughly accomplish it, in following the method 
of M. Bonnet, a Spaniard, printed about one hundred and fifty 
years ago. Then the children need only acquire the usage ; and 
this does not concern me ; it is the business of the persons who live 
with the pupil, or of an ordinary reading-master," (2, 9.) 

Having disposed of the problem so summarily, the Abbe de 
I'Epee puts his theory in practice. "When it pleases me, I dictate 
my lessons de vive VOix {viva voce) without making any sign. 
I speak with my hands crossed behind my back ; the persons near 
me do not understand what I say, because in their presence I pur- 
posely whisper, suppressing all sounds of my speech. However, 
my deaf pupils, seated farther in front, understand what I say with 
their eyes, and write it or repeat it at will. This is the more 
remarkable, since these children come only on the days (Tuesday 

(* Following quotations are froni the Institution des sourds et muets^ ^c, 
Paris 1876. 



and Friday) and hours set apart for their lessons. Moreover, I sel- 
dom repeat this experiment, because the language of the 
metliodic signs is the shortest and the easiest to understand. 
If masters were giving their time to make their pupils speak daily, 
the deaf and mute children would soon get into the habit of speak- 
ing, and would be debarred of conversation during the darkness 
only," (2, 57.) "It is certam that once in a w^hile we dictate our 
lessons viva voce, without any sign. The operation is a little longer, 
and this prevents me from making an ordinary use of it, in ^vhich 
I am ready to acknowledge I may be wrong," (2,24.) 

Was it this delicious and fatal feeling of laziness which invents 
the straight line and tempts us to follov*^ it even through fire, instead 
of the undulating and secure paths which nature has everywhere 
opened to final success and happiness, which captivated de I'Epee ? 
Was it the introduction in his class-room of the Pereirean element, 
which began to haunt the "new master" during his lessons of 1772, 
under the form of Saboureux de Fontenay, auditor with his eye, 
erudite, scrutinizer, pugnacious, reticent ? Or were the difficulties 
of the problem becoming more complex and tantalizing every time 
he declared them solved and conquered? 

Be the cause as it may, it is evident that from this course of 
1772 onward, the teacher of the rue des Moulins lost the philosoph- 
ical sense which, in default of special erudition, had directed his 
first steps in that benevolent undertaking, and lost also his urbane 
temper, since it became impossible for him to ignore the "old master" 
of the rue de la Platriere, loaded twenty years before with the praises 
of the academy pronounced by Buffon. 

Saboureux had taught him the Spanish alphabet, (i, 103;) 
had demonstrated the inanity of his lanfJCige niHllodiqiie des 
signes, and predicted its discomfiture, precisely as it happened, but 
at the same time had refused to surrender the dactylology and the 
whole method which his master was using to make his pupils speak, 
and even to communicate to them his "Gascon accent," (Buffon). 

In the mean while, however, the more discreet Saboureux 
became, the more the Abbe de I'Epee wished to know ; the more 
the latter taught his pupils "in a few accidental lessons," the less he 
could continue without a slow and sure method ; the more "public 
orations" delivered by his pupils, the more his artifice culminated 
over the art. They were "prepared to argue about the sacraments 
of the church in four languages," and to discourse on the finite and 
the infinite, "these speakers of recent manufacture, as he jocundly 
called them. A lad of twelve was drilled to sustain in public Latin 
scholastic theses". But it was becoming impossible to continue this 
crescendo of miracles, even before the small-headed princes and 
duchesses of Vatteau. Therefore, the fourth exhibition of ihis kind, 
besprinkled with magnificats, was the last. The Abbe de I'Epee 



63 

had to close his exhibitions, and to present his work to the public in 
book-form. 

In this book, ''U institution des sourds et muets par la 
voie des signes metJiodicjues, Paris, 1776'' the author, who 
withheld his name, was evidently nervous. He felt that he was do- 
ing a grave act, the particulars of which would sooner or later be 
investigated. In his evident emotion, he first transposed the order 
oi his publicatfons, the order in which his ideas had proceeded from 
each other from 1771, and which was like the key of his own mind 
during the last six years of the incubation of his system. By this 
transposition, he embroiled for himself, as much as for others, the in- 
tellectual processes through which he and they had passed. For 
he says, (2, 5:) The method which we publish to-day is anterior to 
the lessons reported in the second part." "If we had not previously 
formed it, it would have been impossible to prepare the deaf and 
mute pupils for the exercises." Contrarily at 2, 46 : "It is to neces- 
sity alone, and not at all to profound reflections, that we are indebted 
for the combination of our method. We had neither formed, nor 
even foreseen, its enserrible when we gave the first lessons", which 
is the more likely. 

Almost all that second part of the book of the Institution 
is admirable of faith and convinced ignorance : the teacher mis- 
takes and persuades like an apostle ; but as soon as he feels that he 
has gone astray, discontented with himself and others, he lets his argi^- 
ment assume a painfully querulous form to behold. Thus, in the first 
part of the book, he soon "becomes an author by his passion," and 
though he deprecates the character, (i, 13,) "II n'est point question 
ici, de la folic d'etre auteur," he begins all at once a dispute of semi- 
narist. M. de Gerando cannot hide the fact: "Pereire never rose to 
dispute the method of the Abbe de I'Epee ; it was, on the contrary, 
the abbe who himself opened the combat." 

According to the rules of the clerical duel, the abbot gave to 
Pereire the benefit of the first fire, by quoting some parts of the re- 
ports of 1749 and 1 75 1 to the Academy of the Sciences, continued 
with a fragment of the old programme of Pereire, which the report- 
ers had inserted. "The said Pereire divides his instruction into two 
parts — the pronunciation and the intelligence. To instruct them in 
the first part, according to the methods of Pereire, it takes 12 or 15 
months ; in the second, it takes more time." Exulting at this avow- 
al, the new master, who teaches his pupils to speak in a few lessons, 
derides the old one, who needs fifteen months to do the like, declares 
the old method 'excluded' by this avowal itself, and proposes as a 
substitute for it his own expeditious teaching by the methodical signs." 
Then two hundred pages are given to a criticism of the dactylology. 
But as none carries his untold grief to the tomb, if he finds a chance 
to vent it in this world, de I'Epee at last exhale his true chagrin : 



63 

"It would have been desirable that M» Pereire had given to the pub- 
lic the means he uses in his instruction. If they are better than 
ours, the present and future will be grateful for them. But the 
Academy told us that he keeps it secret. He made it a mystery, 
forbidding expressly his pupils to tell how he instructed them," 

(1,23.) 

There is the real object of the publication of the book ''De 
V Institution y Pereire wants to sell his method, or keep it as an 
heirloom for his children. L'Abbe de I'Epee offers to give his for 
nothing. "I do not want any other reward in this world. I expressly 
declare I would not accept any other : gratis acceptistis, gratis 
date,'* (Matth. xviii.) Pereire considers his method as his own, 
acquired by more than forty years of unrelenting, unprofitable labor; 
the produce of that field of labor v/hose property should be held 
sacred, if any, his encephalon. 

De I'Epee is without family duties, and has no more apparent 
object in this world than -'the folly of being an author." In exchange 
for a name, he ofters his method gratis to society. Fatal present ! 
Harpagon accepts, and the deafs are recondemned to mutism. The 
"Institution des signes niHhodique/' will rivet their two in- 
firmities in one : for the first time they will be deaf-mutes ; that is to 
say, deaf without hope of speech. Bring forth the padlock from the 
frontispiece of the book of Bonnet (ed. 1619-20) for the mouth of 
the-child born deaf ; pass it again through his lips, and hide its key 
away for upward of a hundred years ! 

But that is not all. The eighteenth century had a surfeit of 
abbots. Between those who courted pure science, like Nollet, or 
hunted for an ideal like de I'Epee, and those who entertained the 
erethism of an used-up aristocracy by the erotism of their petits vers 
and obscene literature, there was the floating mass of the needy, 
whose great problem was, how to live. The fame of the two schools 
of the deaf and mute children attracted them as minows do pikes. 
They harassed the first teacher and betrayed the second. The 
Abbe Sicard, not content with modifying the method of the signs of 
his master, and to give it his o\vn name without making it more 
serviceable, organized the padlock-application on a large scale, with 
which were silenced also the teachers who dared to make the deaf 

speak in the no, I will write that name no more. When I 

wrote it, I did not know all. 

The French school-) approved by Buffon^ is the one interesting, 
for its progress in language. 

The abbot's school was that of mutism. I have only a few 
words to tell of its fate. 

The mimic signs are natural to man. As his education and 
language are more limited, he makes the more use of them. The 
one who disposes of a correct and colored language needs hardly 



64 

any pantomime to express his ideas. Per contra-, the deaf, left 
dumb, having no other means of expression, tries to render all his 
feelings by gestures, and succeeds to a limited extent. This last obser- 
vation suggested — to the one who had promised, and more than 
pronr'sed, alas! to make like Pereire, the mutes, born deaf, speak, 
— the idea of substituting, to the spoken language, the ''langcifje 
des sigiies nvHhodujnes,'' &c. He succeeded in the strictly natu- 
ral limits of the gestures, and even attained to a picturespue effect by 
the v/ittiness of a few mute pupils. But in the grammatical and 
philosophical order, de I'Epee and his successors in vain turned 
from the "gestes nature W to the ''Lang age des sigjies mWio- 
digues/' trolled thence to the ''Ian gage des signes naturels'' 
and whirled around to the "langage 7iaturel des siguesJ' The 
deaf pupils invariably refused to use this language in their intimate 
relation; de Gerando condemns it, de Bebian demonstrates its inanity, 
(J/<///^6»t?^, &c., V. Gabel, p. no.) The more they circumgyrate, 
the deeper they enter into a pas-de-vice without issue ; simply 
because they were unwillmg to acknowledge, not only the fault, but 
the whole fault ; thus "the Abbe de I'Epee was written down a 
failure, {U echoua;) several men of talent tried in vain to reconsti- 
tute the language of the signs which bred only error and confusion," 
(V. Gabel, p. 112.) But none dared to repeat the first word of the 
Abbe de I'Epee — better if it had been his last too : "The deafs c;an 
speak like us when they are instructed, and the only means to ren- 
der them to society is to teach them to express themselves viva 
voce." There is the Gordian knot which nobody dared to cut, in 
France, at least. The official school of Paris, which ought to have 
been the field of culture of the speech for the mute proteges of 
Pereire and de I'Epee, remained a fallow ground, because, if it had 
been plowed, the bones of the immortal dead would have come on 
top of the furrows. "Is it not enough for your glory to be destined 
to partake of mine ?" wrote to the ambitions Abbe Sicard, the modest 
anonyme who had unsuccessfully fought in himself the folly of au- 
thorship, (de Gerando.) 

But the glory of the Abbe Perrier overtopped that of his prede- 
cessors. One thing alone remained of Pereire, his dactylology, in- 
trusted to Mile. Lemarrois. Vainly had Sicard beseeched for it. 
"You are the last man to whom I would surrender it," proudly 
answered the old dame, and octogenarian. She came to Paris, 
where I heard her, to give this patrimony to the children of her 
benefactor. But these young men, feeling incapable of bearing the 
burden under which their grand-father and their grand-uncle had 
succumbed, brought the dactylology, the key to the labors of Pereire 

to the Abbe Perrier who mislaid it. His glory is to have 

hurried, in the rue d' Enfer, the lost dactyle of the Master. 

After this, the voices which at intervals rose from this silent en- 



closure were sedulously drowned. De Bebian was severely punished 
for having tried to surpass the aforesaid" glories". Ordinaire lost 
the direction ; professor; had lo leave for mere essays at speach- 
teaching. Louis Vaisse — of the school of Gallaudet, twenty years 
a teacher of mutism, but converted like Dr. Gillet of Jacksonville, 
Brother Cyrille of Brussels, Saegert of Berlin, David Buxton of 
Liverpool, &c., to the art of making the children born deaf speak, 
published in 1870, his "Principes sur Ve/iseignement de la pa- 
role aux niuets'' &c., the result of his own experience in the 
class of speech founded by Itard, and soon was permitted to present 
his titles to a pension of retreat — Byzantine phraseology tor expul- 
sion. 

What class was this ? 

In 1839, Itard, my guide in the art of educating idiots, died; 
and after having, in his capacity of surgeon resident in the Institution 
for forty years, seen everything done in it, and noted everything left 
undone, bequeathed his fortune to found the teaching of speech. 
His money was taken, but his normal school of speech was tried only 
for the show, and to render its success impossible, generally in this 
way. When an independent teacher had acquired a fame, which 
could not be ignored, in the art of making the deaf-mutes speak, he 
was invited by the Secretary of the Interior to apply his method in 
one of the two government-institutions. Where he was given a 
class of pupils who continued to live — that is to say to converse in 
signs — with the other deaf-mutes. And after a few months trial, he 
would be dismissed, shorn of his former reputation, and disabled be- 
fore the world, either like Dubois and his sister — an admirable duo 
of devotion and perseverance — or like Fourcade — a rare excentric 
talent — whose exeat '^^ a too precious piece of local cunning inept- 
ness to not be preserved. 

"Paris, :ipril 30, 1866. 

Sir: The 26th of October last, I authorized you to prosecute, 
during three months, in the Imperial Institution for the deaf and 
mute girls of Bordeaux, the experimentation of your process of 
demutization, in view of its theoretical and practical value. The 
reports of the prefect and of the lady superior certify that you have 
satisfactorily accomplished your task. Your mission had for its 
object, first, to initiate the sisters into the intelligence and practice 
of your procedure ; and, secondly, to teach the articulated language 
to a certain number of pupils. On this point, the results leave much 
to be desired. This new experimentation therefore corroborates the 
judgment passed upon your method after its trial in the Imperial 
Institute of Paris. It appears quite certain to say that it could 
endow the child born deaf with articulated language, but only after 
long and perserving exertions. However, the sisters appreciate the 
efficacy of your method, and expect from it, at no distant time, 



satisfactory results. Consequently I allow you an indemnity of five 
hundred francs. 

"The minister of the interior, "Lavalette". 

Authorized to prosecute during three months his process of 
demutisation, Fourcade accomplished the part of his task which 
consisted in initiating the sisters in the intelligence and practice 
of his procedure ; but in teaching the articulated language to a 
certain number of pupils the results left much to be desired. There- 
fore, expulsed be Fourcade with $94.00 for 91 or 92 days work; let 
him go and starve, with this certificate of incapacity of teaching 
the deaf-mute to speak in three months ! Evidently ofiicial France 
was becoming mellow for the cannon-broom of Sedan. But when 
all apparent hopes are blasted a twig of esperance sprouts. I felt 
humiliated for the miserable director who, in 1873, being asked for 
the class of speech founded by Itard, answered that it existed, but 
was not yet in a condition to be seen. In 1877 I may have done 
wrong to not ask again, if that class was at least in a condition to be 
seen ; but another could be seen in the Pereire Institution revived * 



67 



. CHAPTER IV. 

The Anglo-American School. 
History ; Visible speech; Methods; Conclusions. 1873 — 1874. 

28. History. Instead of re-entering the origins, by quoting 
John Wallis' writing (Oxford 1660), Thomas Braidwood's teachings 
(Edinburgh, 1760) and others, let us start from 187 1, when the 
United Kingdom already educated 2000 deal, and the United 
States 3836. Then an effort was in progress, under the auspices 
of Hirsch of Rotterdam, to establish in England the oral system of 
instruction in day-schools, attended by deaf children coming from 
home, or from some friends, where they were boarded out; and 
about the same time a liberal donation was made in America to 
teach the deaf to speak by means of Melville Bell's "Visible 
Speech Symbols". 

It had been remarked that teaching the deaf-mute to articulate 
was the very first and for a long time the only form ; but it almost 
died out, and why ? When a tutor had to instruct a few pupils, and 
to convey to them his own language, he would — as the strongest 
mind — impose it. But when it became customary to congregate con- 
siderable numbers of deaf mutes in public institutions, the inmates 
resorted naturally to the language of signs, of which each one 
brought in some parts, as his previous means of expression ; and 
these signs intensified by their number and repetition became as it 
were imposed on the teachers, who were subdued by their pupils in 
so far as to relinquish the ''oral" for the "sign language", even when 
giving instruction : See Supra de I'Epee. 

It was thus that in the New York Institution — the largest 
in the world, not excepting those of Groningen or Paris — unwieldi- 
ness and mutisation became the principal defects, and other institu- 
tions had to be established near by, in which demutisation became 
the objective. 

The English part of this pj^o loguelfl movement is well de- 
scribed by David Buxton, Superintendent of the Liverpool school, 
who questions, like myself, the propriety of calling it "German". 

The American part of this movement is headed by the growth 
and influence of the school of Northampton, Mass. This Institu- 
tion was created in 1867 by the concurrence of two influences 
which Jerome Cardan would have called and proved (to his own sat- 
isfaction) to be sidereal, by the conjunction of two celestial bodies cor- 

(6) 



responding to the meeting oi John Clarke and Miss Harriet B. 
Rogers in the idea of educating the deaf to speak, and establishing 
for them a pyhsiological school of "demutisation". 

If this undertaking fails, it will not be on account of any inward 
defect in its plan or laxity in its carrying out; it will be owing to its 
very perfection — an ideal which angers human imperfection. It is 
against these unmerciful odds that Miss Rogers, associating her for- 
tune with that of the "visible speech", fought the battle of the 
"oral" against the sign language. 

In the ten years ending Sept. 1877 she educated by this system 
127 pupils, 61 girls, and 96 boys, and she has charge of 66 pupils in 
the present term. In Northampton children are received as early 
as their fifth year in the primary department, a sort of "familiale", 
whence they go to the common school, and to higher grades of 
instruction ; and circumstances, of fortune and capacity permitting, 
manual labor, more or less skilled, is required from every child. 

The programm of Miss Rogers for these three grades of instruc- 
tion will becoine more interesting when compared with that of other 
schools of speech ; in Italy, for instance, Julio Tarra's. 

Primary Course: \ 

Kindergarten, 
Articulation, 
Writing, 
Language, 
Arithmetic, (4 rules), 
Geography, 
Manual of commerce, 
Drawing. 

Common or Craramar Course: 

Articulation, 

Language, 

A VT, ^- ) Mental, 

Anthmetic, } ,,. • ^ ' 

' S Written, 

Geography, 

Manual of Commerce, 

History of the United States, 

Outline of General History, 

Lessons on General Subjects, 

Elements of Grammer, 

" <' Physiology, 

" " Zoology, 

" " Botany, 

" '• Natural Philosophy, 

" " Physical Geography, 



( Free-hand, 
Drawing, ) Object, 

( Designing, 

If iff h Course: 

Articulation and Elocutionary Exercises. 

Arithmetic, (completed), 

Algebra, 

Geometry, 

Physiology, 

Zoology, 

Botany, 

Geology, 

Physical Geography, 

Astronomy, 

Natural Philosophy, 

Chemistry, 

TT- ^ i Ancient 

^'^'"■■n and Modern, 

Grammar and Analysis, 

Rhetoric, 

English Literature, 

Political Economy, 

Psychology, 

^ Object, 

^ • J Instruments, 
Drawing, < r^ ■ 

°' I Crayoning or 

( Water Colors, 

Sunday School. 

It is out of our place to judge of the efficacy of these pro- 
grammes. As in other schools, some children must "stick" at some 
point of the primary, the majority will be able to go through the 
common or grammar course, and a few, favored with an active mmd, 
will come out of the high course with honor. 

What interests us more than scholastic progress is that, through 
the whole curriculum, the children do not spend a day without re- 
ceiving from one to two hours of special instruction in articulation 
and voice culture, and that, except with the two younger classes, ar- 
ticulation and lip-reading are used as means of instruction and 
communication. With the two lower classes writing is largely em- 
ployed in the general instruction, when they undergo the training 
preparatory to the use of speech and lip-reading. Bell's "visible 
speech" is employed with the older classes as well as in the prepara- 
tory drill of the younger classes; it is the base of the "oral system" 
at Northampton. 



70 

This system has made converts in America and Europe : I will 
insist on the two most important. 

29. Visible Speech. — Until 1866, Dr. Gillet had taught by the 
language of signs, for which he had great talent and reputation. But 
the reading of the life and method of Pereire shook his faith in it, 
and what he saw and heard of the pupils of Miss Rogers decided 
him to send his best teacher to learn in Massachusetts the rediscov- 
ered art: thus it sometimes happens that "the smallest American States 
give light to the largest. Since that time, Miss Trask opens every 
year a class of speech for the new-comers. Though her first lessons 
are individual, to correct the peculiarities of each pupil, her teaching- 
is collective, for from eight to fifteen pupils, standing in a semi-circle 
around her ; but not separated from her by anything like the oval 
table of Dresden. She holds, alternately, a little stick, to mark the 
time or duration of the sounds, and an ivory fork, to softly direct the in 
ternal organs of articulation, and the chalk to draw or write as in- 
struction requires. She also uses dexterously her thumb and index- 
finger to form an image of the cavity of the mouth, at all the degrees 
of opening whose representation is desired in the course of the lesson. 
In her first encounter with a child, she uses the means of communi- 
cation which were employed with him at home ; but after a very few^ 
days she puts those means aside, and employs simultaneously articu- 
lation, writing, reading, drawmg, and teaches them already to imitate 
the symbols of the "visible speech," made by herself, or by the more 
forward children, without any admixture of manual alphabet or 
mimic language. The chief mode of teaching at Jacksonville by Miss 
Trask as well as in Northampton by Miss Rogers, and in London by 
Miss Hall, is by the "visible speech" of Melville Bell. I will try to give 
an idea of it. 

It is an alphabet, of which each letter, called a symbol, repre- 
sents, at the same time, the sound to be emitted and the position of 
the organs of speech during its emission ; the form of the letters 
being the very form the organs must assume to pronounce them, be 
the word English or Mantchou. One can or cannot understand it, 
yet one cannot pronounce it wrong; and one can read it, without 
knowing what it means, to another who will know its meaning. 
This will unavoidably happen, because the letters or symbols repre- 
sent, as would drawings, the mouth in its varied speaking positions. 

In this phonetic writing, the simple vocals are represented by 
the straight vertical line, modified by the addition to it of subordinate 
symbols, which indicate the parts of the organs where the voice un- 
dergoes certain modifications to form the different vowels. When 
the sound must pass through the nose, that line is slightly undulated, 
as is the velum of the palate during its passage. 

The consonants are represented by curves, not unlike the letter 
C, but whose positions and combinations express the meaning by 



71 

showing the position to be assumed by the organs. Thus, the con- 
vexity toward the left (as in our alphabet) represents the curve of the 
tongue carried backward, as in K ; the same symbol, with the curve 
turned upward, as in Y ; the same, with curve downward, point up, 
as in T ; the same, curved forward, as in P, and so on. 

Combniations of the straight and curved lines form syllables and 
words. There are also marks which modify a sound, (modifiers;) 
others which shorten it, (glides ;) others to prolong itj and others, 
like accents, which mark the emphasis before the word or syllable 
to be made prominent. 

In the class and class-books, opposite to these symbolic letters 
are seen engravings of all the corresponding positions of the external 
and internal organs of speech, and also our ordinary letters and 
syllables. The alphabet and ordinary writing are taught simultane- 
ously with this physiological alphabet ; the children learn to write 
and read, to pronounce and answer, at the sight of the two, or of 
those alphabets separately. 

30. Method. In the beginning of the instruction, one meets 
with great diversities of disposition, which require great perspicuity 
and patience; for, if some ot the children understand at once what 
is shown to and required from them, others are immovable, and 
even may fall into a taciturn apathy, from which they sometimes 
come out only when a ray beaming, nobody knows from whence, 
lights up their sensorium. But this condition of impeneti-ability 
of their sensorium to the means of education may last a long while, 
and even simulate idiocy. However, it is good to keep in mind, 
against discouraging influences, that there are no more cases of 
idiocy among children born deaf than among any other class ; and 
that the supposed deaf-idiots pointed out are "enfants arrur^S,'* 
or affected with very superficial idiocy ; effect of the blanks left in 
their mind by the absence of the whole series of notions which enter 
the brains of other children through the auditory canal. 

Nevertheless, since there is no room here for these physiological 
questions, the method used in Jacksonville, Northampton, and Lon- 
don, and which is yet in its period of development, seems one of the 
most appropriate to remove the darkness of mind resulting from the 
privation of the auditive perceptions, and of the whole order of 
ideas which are derived from these perceptions. 

All the parts of education are taught by Dr. Gillet and his 
institutresses by speech and by writing, which are not only for 
the mute, as it is pretended, two disdnct forms of language, but are 
co-relative and counter-proofs one of the other. By this double 
process, as Miss Trask here, and Professor Vai'sse of Paris remarked, 
if a deaf pupil does not speak his language as well as one who 
hears, he learns to write it better than one who cannot speak it. 

Much has been said to prove that the child born deaf cannot 



comprehend the spoken language, even when he conprehends the 
written one. But besides the mutual support which these two forms 
of the same thing afford to each other in the mind, the deaf, like 
the hearing child, understands them both equally by intuition from 
his own procedure, and by the relative position of the words in a 
sentence. Which of us has looked in the dictionary for the mean- 
ing of a single word among a thousand ? Their positions defined 
them to our intuition. But if we are what some teachers of the 
mute appear to be, the biggest books will not be sufficient to put in 
position (at their logical place) the words whose comprehension we 
want to impart to the child born deaf, and yet mute. Therein lies 
the logic of the method of teaching the language. Those to whom 
this method is not open from intuition, may go to see its application 
to the less gifted of the children of the schools for idiots. 

But I see that I have left the class-room of Miss Trask to enter 
into the explanations of which her teaching has been the subject- 
m.atter. This being so, it may be as well to continue in the same 
strain, after having given the reader to understand that most of the 
following reflections resulted from a conversation between Miss 
Trask, Dr. Gillet, and myself after we left the class-room. 

Imitation was at first, as in Germany, an empirical mode of 
teaching the mute to speak, it remained the first lever of the meth- 
ods deserving that philosophical name. Thus the training by 
which the aptitude to imitate is strengthened in the mute must be 
made a mediate part of his instruction. But the short road to call 
the attention of the pupil at first to our organs of speech, in order to 
make him imitate their movements by his own, may eventually 
prove the longest and the least easy. For in the deaf mute these 
organs have been previously impelled only by unconscious move- 
ments of totality, and their internal and compact structure, or 
mechanism, allows the child to perceive but a few of the more ex- 
ternal and extreme movements of the speaking-organs of the master 
which he must imitate. Moreover the deaf-mute, in order to learn 
to speak, will need to be exercised in all his modalities of feeling the 
vibrations of the voice, and his hand must be educated for the duty 
of carrying the vocal vibrations to the brain, which, in its turn, will 
send back to the executive apparatus the order for reproducing 
them. The same tactile education is due to the temples, neck, 
epigastrium, and wherever the vibrations of the human voice have 
a chance to be perceived. Meanwhile the mouth, in its turn, ought 
to learn how to direct the most attentive operations of the touch to 
its own component parts, as the tongue or lips, which can exercise 
toward each other the functions of palpation, as the hand does 
toward the external world. For these reasons — though there are 
others also — it seems more advantageous to choose the apparently 
more circuitious, but really surer path of the manual imitations, to 



73 

exercise upon at first — as on a gymnastic apparatus — the aptitude to 
imitate of the new pupils. Soon, indeed, a teacher cannot fail to 
perceive the great advantages the hand affords for these primary 
:actile exercises upon the mouth and the other vibrant parts above 
referred to. 

The hand is more sensitive, more habituated to feel than any 
3f the internal organs of speech ; more conscious of its tactile im- 
pressions ; and, above all, its parts are admirably distinct, by which 
disposition the slightest of their movements and contacts are ren- 
dered appreciable to the sight and to the touch. In this latter 
respect, it would be a grave error to imagine that the deaf pupil 
makes valuble exercises with the hands, when he acts the manual 
ilphabet or the language of signs, and thereby would gain some 
actile experience which could be afterward transferred to his study 
of the speech. For the gestures and signs, after they have been 
learned with reflection, knowingly produced, and photographed 
seriatim during the first scholastic impressions, will fall from the order 
Df rational operations into that of automatism. But automatism is 
I function by which the act is accomplished from the periphery to a 
neighboring ganglion, and I'^ice versa, without ascending or 
descending communication to and from the cephalic center. This 
mechanism suffices to explain altogether the incomparable rapidity 
md precision of the automatic operations, particularly those of the 
hand, but also their imperfectibility, and intransferability from one 
3rgan to another. That is the reason also why the past unconscious 
movements of the mouth, like the previous hand mimics, 
do not prepare these organs for the conscious movements which will 
be needed in the exercises of speech. In this wise, the exercises of 
imitation are at first rational, but the routine may become automatic 
to the point of stultifying even an idiot. On the contrary, manual 
imitation carried on with spirit — as we do,oi ought to do, in educating 
idiots — is the antipode of automatism, a lively intellectual exercise. 
3o, when you use either sight or touch, to make the child 
perceive the movements which produce speech, the exercises which 
promote imitation must follow each other as the unexpected words 
from an unknown and intere*sting book. In a lesson of imitation 
thus given and received, the impressions have to pass from the 
periphery to the encephalon, and from this center to the periphery by 
a double route along the sensitive and motor nerves. The labor of 
imitation is conscious, though rapid, rational, and consequently sus- 
ceptible of transference. It will accordingly be possible, when con- 
venient and opportune, to transfer this dactyle work, the produce 
of digital imitation, to the organs of the speech, when this trans- 
ference has to take place, whatever be your agent, sight or touchy 
or both. 

But let us have a short practical disgression about the former. 



74 

Sight has likely been the oldest and the only sense substituted 
for hearing in the teaching of the articulation to deaf and dumb 
children. "They were taught to listen with their eyes", said the 
books. We have described several of the means and appliances 
used to that effect by several schools. But new ones will be found ; 
and just now Dr. Lemercier, one of the authors of the anatomical 
models called plastics, prepares a vertical section of the human 
head, natural size, in which all the pieces of anatomical physiology, 
representing the organs of speech in the act of pronouncing, could 
be inserted. Upon this section already executed, and by the inser- 
tion of the movable pieces, not only the teacher will be able to 
leisurely demonstrate, cle visu et tactu, the most hidden positions, 
but his pupils will be enabled to repeat alone at any time their exer- 
cises of speech with a better guide than the mirror of Don Lopez 
the symbols of M. M. Bell, or the photographs of Professor Fourcade. 
For it is a fact, which everybody can ascertain,' that the sight of, 
and the contact with, substantial models or plastics^^ invite to imita- 
tion infinitely more than sight alone, attracted even by plan- 
drawings or pictures. But these excellent objective instruments, and 
others to come no doubt, will never push aside and out of practice 
the subjective process by which the conscious touch of the mute is 
developed to its highest power of reflected tactility, and concen- 
trated from the hand and periphery to the buccal cavity. By this 
objecto - subjective process, the pupil will be able to feel the most 
minute changes in the position of his organs of speech, and will 
soon become habituated to produce them, at first by imitation in the 
presence of examples or models like those of Lopez or Lemercier,then 
on the command of his master, or on the challenge of his comrades, 
in mutual lessons, in which each pupil in his turn will be master or 
scholar (with some hearing friend as a judge) ; and, lastly, from his 
own will and spontaneity [propvio niotu) in practical successions 
of voices and articulations, whose continuity and modulation will 
soon constitute the speech. 

One can now understand the propriety of the expresssion by 
which I characterized imitation as the first lever of the teaching of 
speech. For this lever, motors were needed, and they are found in 
the regard and touch educated to the rank of intellectual functions. 
In possession of these three instruments, the deaf, though absolutely 
dumb, will speak; that is, will say what he feels, and feel what he 
says. For the deafs, who distinguish in various degrees the voices 
but not the words, who have a.n idea of the speech, but cannot imi- 
tate it by want of a sufticient auditive perception, this special sensa- 
tion must be exalted, ' as is the touch in the blind, the eye-sight in 
the painter, the smell in the perfumer. This is the object of a sen- 
sorial education, in which our ancestors have preceded us. Pereire 
extended audition of the subjects of his third category so far 



that he brought some of them to the point of followmg a conversa- 
tion without looking at the mouth of their interlocutors. With our 
new aids to perceive sensations, and with a special culture, we must 
be capa,ble of producing the same results without showing too much 
vanity. 

A last remark on speech. It is the result of a complex func- 
tion, spontaneously produced m ordinary children, and artificially 
in those born deaf. The artifice consists in developing separately, 
then altogether, by a sort of fusion, its elements, which are : the 
air expired with certain managements ; the same air rendered sonor- 
ous by its passage between cords more or less tense, (vocal cords,) 
and under a vibratile tongue, (epiglottis ) ; this same sound rendered 
articulate in its course along a series of organs which open, shut, 
withdraw, or flatten themselves to prepare, for one or the other issue, 
(mouth or nostrils), the exit of sweet, slow, short, long, stridant, 
sibilant, or explosive syllables, according to the obstacles which they 
meet on the way. The teachers succeeded first in making the mute 
speak by simple imitation of the one person by the other ; then, to 
personal nnitation, was added that of objects by the sight. This 
latter, by the improvement of the objects, became anatomic, and 
by the progress of the methods physiologic. But no great stride 
has been made in the use of imitation by the mute, because its 
training was not first made upon the external organ, like the hand, 
and, later, transferred to the internal ones of the speech ; which is 
the only way to endow this function with intelligence, quickness, 
and precision. They have, like Pereire, I'Abbe Villa, Don Lopez, 
Vaisse, Magnat, Fourcade at all the stations of his cross, and others 
in Savoy, Belgium, Switzerland, employed the manual touch, and 
the natural capacacity of some organs for the perception of the 
vibrations of the noise ; but I am not aware that any one since 
Pereire ever tried to elevate the touch of the deaf to the degree of 
efiicacy of that of the blind, nor to transfer this sense, once intel- 
lectualized, from its external and particular manual sphere of action, 
to the internal organs of speech. One feels that there is here a 
whole field to be cultivated ; for the organs, components of these 
parts, from the diaphragm to the lips, are susceptible of a conscious 
touch, and of a reflective obedience to the dictates of the will. This 
idea demands further development : the touch as well as imitation 
must have its special training-classes. 

I may be reproached with not having myself carried out this 
idea ; but' my situation was unfavorable to it, and when I suggested 
it to others ill-luck prevented, as in the last instance : At the last meet- 
ing of the Association of Physicians for idiots I noticed a child look- 
ing intelligent enough who would not sing. He was deaf. I had 
him on the platform near the music teacher, put his hand, then his 
chest against the piano, and he began to mark the measures with his 

(7) 



76 — 

head. I left a few indications. To my recent inquiries the lady- 
teacher answered : Regarding my interesting deaf pupil, I contin- 
ued the expenments you suggested, and met with a considerable 
degree of success. But the child went home for vacation. I trust 
another year to be able to accomplish something ; think I could 
soon train him to mark time with his feet. Many thanks etc. 

3I. Conclusion. — From this review, therefore, it would be 
unjust to conclude that the old methods of making the mute speak 
were wrong ; we ought to say they were incomplete. Except in the 
period and in the country where, to erase the name of Pereire, the 
tradition was spirited away, this method, and the art which realizes 
it, have on the whole progressed by the accretion of new means of 
instruction, the dispelling of secrecy, and honest compromises. 

We conclude from this rapid survey of the teaching of the deaf 
and mute in several countries, that the schools — where they are 
taught no other means of communication than the gestures and writ- 
ing — are schools of mutism. 

The French school, represented by Magnat, if it goes back to 
the practice of Pereire and to the first declaration of I'Epee, may be- 
come equal to the others ; and, if it enforces the cultivation of 
touch, even unto the organs of speech, it may reach the first rank. 

The will of Itard ought to be respected, and his legacy faithfully 
applied to a normal class of speech in the school of Paris. 

The schools supported by the state have for their object, not 
competition with private enterprises or their discouragement, but to 
test and improve the methods, and mainly to turn out competent 
teachers for the free day-schools, 'like the first one of the Abbe de 
I'Epee, or "familial" schools, like those of Pereire and Janke. Women 
are, in all these cases, the best teachers, particularly of speech; and 
they should instruct as well as educate the deaf children of both sexes 
in common with a good sprinkling of hearing children. 

Only schools, where speech is taught, have a scientific stand- 
ing. The methods of teaching speech, mainly characterized by imi- 
tation, or sight, or touch, do not now imply exclusions, but only 
predominances of one procedure of teaching over the others. By 
calling to their aid descriptive and plastic anatomy, and the physi- 
ology of the senses, particularly the training of touch, these schools 
invoke niutual friends, which cannot fail to effect an early fusion 
of all the methods in a single and final one. Already the means 
employed in the various schools of speech may be characterized as 
physiological; and the time cannot be far distant when, by the ident- 
ity of their principles and the conformity of their teachings to the 
procedures of nature, they will deserve the collective appellation which 
Miss Hull found in her clear foresight: the natural method of 

INSTRUCTING AND TEACHING THE DEAF-MUTE TO SPEAK. 

I carried with me from London this hopeful word of a teacher, 



_^ 77 

whose zeal is surpassed only by her candor ; and I have, in the last 
five years, seen her prophecy approaching fulfillment. 

Among other pursuits, I have given some time to the subject 
dear to her and to my old teacher, revisited a few schools, seen 
new ones, conversed with those considered the leading spirits of 
"demutisation" in France, Switzerland, Italy, England, and, retro- 
spectively, here — because we never know enough of home-doings, 
when looking for progress abroad — , and brought the subject to a 
point of intellectual maturity equally satisfactory to the mind and to 
the heart. 

I say this without a ray of pride, since I, at the outset, confess 
that, what I have to say is not mine, but is what I have seen or 
heard ; and, acknowledging that I could have learned more and bet- 
ter, were it not for my own failings, I will give in brief these new 
facts and conclusions : 

A. — Let us note, first, the creation in 1874 of the school of 
Jacob Rodrigue Pereire, subsidized by his grand-children, and ma- 
naged by Professor Magnat. Prior to his call to Paris, Magnat 
was the principal of the school of Geneva, where he had taught the 
"parole artiCAllH'' to the deaf-mutes. In this year of the trans- 
ference of his school from Switzerland to France, he published three 
classical books, two of which are inscribed, in token of his new 
departure "d'avres la vuthode de F. R. Pereire." 

Conformably to this programme, Magnat did not commit him- 
self to the exclusive teaching of and by the "oral language"; but, 
bound either by his antecedents (of which I know too litde to tell) 
or by the historical antecedents of the method of Pereire as advo- 
cated by Buffon, he assumed the middle position, between the 
"sign-language" and "the oral-language" which is characterized by 
the term of "combined system" {systeme COmhim). 

B. — But a year before this event, the Italian Congress of teach- 
ers of deaf-mutes held at Sienna, had proclaimed that "speech 
ought to be i\iQ principal means of instruction," thus virtually fa- 
voring the "combined system" of which Magnat was to become, 
under the toga of Pereire the earnest and advanced champion. 

Such, too, is Gislandi, Director of the Royal Institute of Milano, 
who speaks rather feelingly against the "purists", with an eye towards 
his neighbor and rival, who, a few doors below in the same street, 
teaches the "oral language" as we shall see. Gislandi rehearses the 
position in 1877 in these words : "The contest is warm between the 
VUrists and the non-purists ; I am of the latter, who agree with 
the Congress of Sienna." Of the same school are the Roman teachers 
who use the manual alphabet and speech; the new Director of 
Geneva, who teaches speech and uses signs and the manual al- 
phabet besides ; and many others I have not seen, but heard and 
read about. 



78 — - 

In short, the "combined system" has not only stopped some 
bright minds m their way to improvement; it has also made less 
desirable converts for the obvious reason that it leaves ajar the door 
of eclecticism, which opens on two roads and allows every teacher to 
penetrate farther either way — not only m obedience to the 
respective abilities of some pupils to express themselves by signs 
or orally, but in compliance with superior orders, with worldly in- 
terests, or from puny imitation. 

It is thus that the leaders of the "non-purists" have a strong 
desire to teach their pupils to speak; but their followers are in variable 
degrees indifferent or antagonistic to this part of their task. It 
is thus that under the common name of "combined system" some 
schools teach the signs as the only serviceable language, and 
besides the "oral", as French is taught to fashionable misses ; 
and others succeed better in making speech {la parole) Hhe 
habitual language of the deaf 

Since 1873 more schools of "signs and mutism" have become 
schools of "oral teaching", than I have named ; some by the effect 
of a brave conviction, like those of David Baxton, Superintendent 
of the school of Liverpool, and of Patterson of Manchester ; 
others from outside pressure, — for instance those taught by religious 
corporations: in Bordeaux, Toulouse, etc., after a few lessons 
of Fourcade; in Paris, in St. Roch, in imitation of the new 
Pereire method; in Buffalo, N. Y., with an inkling of Bell's 
symbols. But it is done in a spirit of obedience, not in a 
spirit of criticism ; so that the "oral language" is taught like 
the "manual or sign languages", indiscriminately, Pour V amoUT 
du Bon-BieiL, mais non pour C amour cie la J'eriti'. 

Such are the principal causes of the difficulty encountered m 
extricating the true and good, from the sham or false schools of 
the "combined system". 

C. — The "oral system" of the purists consists in teaching no 
other language but the oral, and in using no other during the in- 
struction, games, home associations, etc. I have named its oldest 
living representative, Hirsch of Rotterdam, and Miss Hull of Lon- 
don. I have seen and heard more of them. One of the oldest 
and purest of these teachers of oral language is, according to all 
critics. W. D. Arnold of Riehen, near Basle; and a younger one, 
whom I was happy to meet, is the younger and energetic Julio Tarra 
of Milano. 

The latter teaches nothing but speech and by speech, gives 
two years to the vocal exercises alone, relieved only by de- 
sultory pleasant occupations, like drawing and calligraphy, without 
even imparting the nominal value of the letters. — Two years to 
learn to speak, like babies. — Then two years for the construction 
of sentences ; and two more for instruction in history, geograph y 



70 

etc., a full course lasting as long as a collegiate one ; and why 
less ? . . All the while, and several times a day, the pupils are trained to 
read the oral and facial movements producing speech, from 
front, side, and extreme oblique views. His mode of teaching must 
be as individual as it is dogmatic ; though, as a method, it resembles 
much that is done in Turino, and that I admired in the schools 
of Prof Greenburger of New York and of Miss Rogers at North- 
ampton. 

D. — The congress of the English teachers of the deaf, 
which met in London in 1877, went farther than the one of Sienna. 
They voted the creation of a normal school for the training of the 
deaf-mutes by the "oral method". The discussion of this resolution 
elicited the remarkable fact, that the so-called "German method" 
can not be taught to an Englishman by a German for the phy- 
siological reason that the starting point of the voice is so far apart 
in the languages of the two. Be this as it may, the German teachers 
have been disregarded ; and the normal school of London is entirely 
English, and has the best practical teachers tor its pupils. 

This point was not carried without a contest, in which the 
methods were thouroughly discussed, the "combined" being con- 
demned, the "pure oral" recommended, on grounds like these: 

The "combined method" rarely gives such good results in 
general education as even the "sign method" alone, because the eye- 
attention of the child is divided between the hand and the mouth, 
and can not become expert in the reading of both ; and likewise 
with the movements : skill and habit in the expression ot thought 
with the hand is incompatible with skill and habit in articula- 
tion. 

Moreover, the time employed in learning articulation is dis- 
tracted from the other studies prosecuted by signs, without special 
benefit ; for the pupil may speak and read more or less, but he will 
continue to think, play, and lire in the "sign language"; and the 
"oral language" — whose acquisition retarded his general education — 
the plain English will not after all be his mother-tongue. 

On the other hand, the "oral method", which it seems impossible 
to approach without signs or manual alphabet, can be taught by the 
intuitive and forcible process of contrast and comparison : starting 
with an object and its articulated name, adding to it one quality or 
another, an action or another etc., as shown in the graduated series 
of tables of Hill of Weissenfels. 

It is true, that the deaf does comprehend more readily by 
"signs"; but when he begins to comprehend, to read on the lips, and 
to articulate (which happens generally after the second year) his pro- 
gress is much more rapid and thorough than that of the pupil 
taught by "signs". 

E. — This thesis is supported by authorities of great weight in 



80 

my estimation ; (a) by B. S. Ackers, who, as the father of a toto- 
deaf-girl traveled m Europe and America, visited ahiiost all the 
schools, and criticized the theory and the results of the different sys- 
tems, in order to choose the best one for his daughter; (b) by Prof. 
Greenburger of New York, and by Miss Rogers of Northampton, — 
who trained many pupils, and who has in constant trainmg several 
classes of 20 or 30 pupils with whom the double process of teaching, 
and of being taught, goes on "orally". Moreover, she exercises 
them in singing classes; — not for the sake of the song, but to give 
suppleness and obedience to their voices, and to cultivate their feeling 
of sonorous vibrations. By the exclusive use of the "oral method", 
Miss Rogers brings her pupils to the point of using speech na- 
turally at school, at play, in their family relations. 

F. — My last authority will be the "Memoir" of Miss Hull<of 
which I can not help quoting, ever so little, since I possess in manu- 
script that most sincere inquiry after the best method of educatmg 
the deaf-mutes : 

"The belief, that the voice of the deaf must be harsh and un- 
natural, is founded on the experience acquired in the "combmed 
system". As I originally taught by that system, my pupils were 
examples of that harshness; those who heard their voices, condemned 
them as distressing. The same people now say that my present 
pupils are not unpleasant to hear, and are easy to understand. So 
much for the constant use of the "voice" to the exclusion of any 
"sign-language." 

"So long as I taught articulation only as an accomplishment — 
writing and finger-talking being the most frequent means of converse 
— my pupils used their voices only in addressing me, and in certain 
studies ; consequently the greater part of the day their vocal organs 
were lying idle. 

"The deprivation of constant practice injures the tone of the 
voice ; and as the deaf are only too ready to think themselves the 
objects of detractive remarks, they will find out that their speech is 
considered peculiar, and be driven to use it less, and more the silent 
methods ; and they thus are driven back to the society of the deaf. 

"In contrast, a child taught to speak constantly — using his voice 
and looking at the mouths -^ acquires unconsciously many sounds 
that have not been obtainable in study hours. 

"A greater advantage is, that, thinking in the oral language — 
which is the same as the book language — the pupil can learn 
from any book or periodical, instead of being Hmited for his 
information to books expressly printed in the syntax of the deaf- 
mute language. 

"With regard to economy of time, though at first the "oral 
system" seems slower than the "combined system", practice proves 
the contrary. In the first two years I find my present pupils ap- 



81 

parently behind those I taught by the "mute languages", but in the 
third and fourth year they take their stand where my former pupils 
were in the fifth and sixth year, and they have at the same time a 
freedom in associating with their families and friends, such as the 
others never attained. 

•'It was the question of conveying the largest amount of infor- 
mation that held me back so long from "lip-reading" ; and it is that 
which holds back many teachers : the "combined method" did not 
convince me, the "pure oral method" did," 

I wish I could quote more of Miss Hull on this score ; but I 
have to borrow from her authority on another question after intro- 
ducing the follovvmg general remarks. 

G. — It appears from the foregoing quotations, that the division 
of the schools for the deaf according to nationalities has lost its 
meaning, — not excepting its reduction to two : the would-be 
"French", which is the "abbatial" miltisatioih and the assumed 
"German", which Buffon extolled as the "Spanish- French demutisa- 
tiojr many years before Heinicke. — The same documents show 
also that between the present schools, in which the English have 
made such marked advance, the teaching of speech is no more 
a question of yes or no, but one of plus and minus ; and that its 
technics, settled in principle, will continue to vary in obedience to 
the physiological accommodation of the organs of speech in differ- 
ent countries. 

H. — My last quotation and remark is this: After years of 
teaching to read and articulate by the use of Bell's symbols. Miss 
Hull perceived that the thought of these symbols holds her pupils 
back from a ready power of lip-reading ; and this discovery made 
her give them up. 

"So long as my pupils thought m the visible-speech-symbols and 
spelled in the ordinary way, there was a process of translation going 
on (not unlike, though not quite so heterogeneous as that from the sign 
language to the verbal, but we all know that, to truly speak a lan- 
guage, we must think in it. For this reason, I now avoid teaching 
my pupils the "symbols" ; though I still consider a knowledge ot 
them of great value to a teacher." 

Here let us appeal from Miss Hull possibly discouraged, to Miss 
Hull confident or critical — since her mind evidently passed through 
these stages; and we will say: not only the symbols of A. M. Bell 
are necessary to the teacher as guides, but to the children as the 
types of the positions to be assumed and of the movements to be 
made, during their self-repeating lessons. In this wise— if not as 
the base of a whole system of verbal and "written" communication,-- 
the "symbols" complete the series of illustrated lessons, oftered in 
Lopez's mirror-pictures, in Fourcade's photographs, in Vaisse's engra- 
vings, in Lemercier's models, etc., as means of representing to the 



— 82 

eye the physiology of speech : — a part, certainly, of Miss Hull's 

NATURAL METHOD. 

However, Miss Hull differs from her American friend and former 
teacher. Miss Rogers, on a point of doctrine, because truth is her 
best friend and inspirer. Here Miss Rogers shows more firmness, 
and Miss Hull concedes more to her conscience. Who, of the 
two, will be awarded the premium for practical success in a not too- 
far future ? - - In other words, will the "physiological symbols ot 
the speech" be used as the only reasonable letters in the teaching 
of the deaf to speak, read, etc. ? 

But the receding of Miss Hull from the teaching of and by the 
"phonetic symbols" has a higher significance than this in the 
philosophy of education. It furnishes a fine illustration oi the 
sickening autocracy of automatism over what we — at large — are 
pleased to call our intellectual determinations ; and shows how we — as 
lone units — are feeble under the weight of the great beast. Custom. 

Bell's symbols (such as (^{O, which denotes the word "yes") 
constitute the only alphabet which represents anatomically the 
physiology of human languages. .This graphic system of represen- 
tation of the organs in the act of emitting voices is applicable to all 
the languages, known and unknown ; and could as well be ex- 
tended to the language of all the animals, as it certainly is a re- 
newal of the first phonetic alphabets, which succeeded the sym- 
bolic, when the wise men of the East wanted to enter in communica- 
tion with the Mediterranean races. It took ages, and many revo- 
lutions to alter the Assyrian into the Sidonic, Phoenician and the 
successive Hellenic letters. So it will take a long while, even in this 
age of rapid evolution, to substitute for our mongrel letters, the 
physiological symbols or graphics of speech ; and how many 
small, faithful "marms", like Miss Hull, will pass, taking it up in 
despair, before the "sovereign people" can say yes to it and would 
write it. 

And yet, the physiological symbols of Alexander Melville Bell — 
rendered actually useless by our automatic habits — the only plea on 
which to excuse my own and others' stupidity — is a greater inven- 
tion than the telephone of his son, Alexander Graham Bell — rendered 
almost magnetically popular by our present need ot automatons to 
work for us when we think or not. 

Let us not forget that both the physiological alphabet and the 
telephone have been elaborated m the schools for the deafs ; and 
that to an intense love for the afflicted, are due two important dis- 
coveries. So are mysteriously linked the progress of the highest in- 
telligences with charity for the afflicted. The following chapter will 
be another demonstration of this truth. 

In due honor to Itard, my first teacher, and to J. R. Pereire, 
whom the intellectual guides of my youth venerated, I have conclu- 



ded this second part of my report, leaving untinished the first, and 
unwritten the third — though its subject, the Education of Idiots, 
is as dear to me as the teaching of speech to the mute was to Itard 
and Pereire — thus paying the debt of my friends first. 



(8) 



84 " 



EDUCATION OF IDIOTS AND FEEBLE-MINDED 
CHILDREN. ^ 

"^5 pathological pkysiology is the counterproof of normal 
physiology^ likewise normal education is for one part 
created^ for another verified by pathological education?^ 

CHAPTER I. 

Foreign Schools for Idiots. 

Origin; German schools; German methods; The school of Gladbach; Belgian 
and Dutch schools; Gheel^ Ghent ^ The Hague; French schools at Bicetre^ 
La Salpetriere^ Geniilly; English schools at Essex Hall^ Earlswood^ Lan- 
caster^ Norman Field, Clayton; Swiss and Italian Cretins. 

32. Origin. Next in the chronologic order of special teach- 
ing would come a survey of what was exhibited in Vienna and seen 
in European schools for the education of the blind. But there was 
nothing new and worthy of special encomium ; on the contrary, 
some alterations which do not seem for the better ; for instance, the 
limitation of their professional teaching to music in two forms — 
instrumental execution and tuning. Under the leadership of Dr. 
Howe, the blind have been better taught in this republic. Being 
here particularly interested in the principle, we have already shown 
the theory of the substitution of the sense of touch for that of sight : 
a) When Pereire taught Mile. Lemarrois, her mother, and all her 
family to speak and read by the touch on the arm, or in the hand 
of each other ; §) Sarboureux exposing the theory of this fact and 
demanding its application to the teaching of the blind ; c) The 
Abbe de 1' Epee advocating this idea of his acquaintance, Sabou- 
reux ; cl) Long before, Haiiy realized it (1784) — a realization 
which demanded more benevolence than brains. Therefore we 
break the chronological order in favor of the rational order which 
calls for the education of idiots and feehU-minded children. 

This education, too, was like an off-shoot of that of the deaf- 
mutes. Not only did Itard, for forty years physician in the Parisian 
Institution, conduct there the experimental training of the Sauvage 
de V ^veyrony but he applied to it the same physiological ideas 
which, in Pereire, had received the approbation of Lecat, Rousseau, 
and Buffon. The subsequent incubation and development of this 



idea will be better told by somebody else, and may be omitted here, 
where are wanted only the pedagogic results arrived at in educating 
idiots. 

Few of these results could be seen in the Welt-Ausstellung, but 
the bulk were scattered in many schools, all created since 1840. I 
had, before starting, visited the American institutions ; so that — with 
memory fresh of the doings at home — I could see and compare 
what was done abroad. 

33. 1. German schools for idiots. — method. Germany 
did not impress me as having made much progress ; but I have not 
seen all her schools, Speaking only of those I visited, — where I ex- 
pected the best I found the worst, that is at Berlin and Dresden. 
I had in my mind the labors of Sagaert, and found places that weie 
hardly custodian. But Sagaert had left the direction of the school 
tor idiots and deaf children, for the more influential position of inti- 
mate counselor of the Kaiser in all matters of education. His mind 
was now scattered among his pupils, two of them already named, — 
Kratz of Liegnitz and Linartz of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen.) In the 
German school, it has been a mistake or a deplorable necessity to 
mingle the idiots with the mutes ; the former being harmed in sev- 
eral ways and benefited in scracely any by the often rude contact of 
the latter, and the teacher of both being overtaxed and also poorly 
helped. For, if the state institutions are tolerably supplied with 
sub-teachers and attendants, the provincial ones are miserably pro- 
vided; and with grief I left Liegnitz, where I saw Kratz doing the 
work of three or four men. There, also, I saw the children take a meal 
of only a piece of dry dark bread, though cheerfully ; and the 
building was very dilapidated, though clean and well aired, with 
fine open grounds. The province is poor. 

The school of Crashnitz, near Breslau, is large and well furn- 
ished. I did not penetrate far enough north to see it, nor those of 
Bendorf, Stettin, Hanover, nor the much-praised one of Dr. Lau- 
denberger near Stuttgart. But I saw the school of Gladbach, near 
Dusseldorf, whose name, written over the front gate, is Hephata. 

This institution has existed fifteen years under the direction of 
Dr. Barthold, a pupil of Laudenberger — a man of ripe and con- 
firmed ideas. The grounds are fine, the buildings have a conventual 
air, like our old College d' :^uxerre, built by Amiot. There are 
one hundred and thirty pupils — ninety boys and forty girls - • 
taught by two male teachers, and ten females who attend to the 
general nursing, education in cleanliness, and elementary good habits. 
The rooms are scantily furnished with models, charts, etc., but full 
of desks, and the desks full of pupils. College reminiscenses again 
forced their way into my mind, not because we, too, were idiots (of 
some sort), but because those of Gladbach were almost as crowded 
as we were with books, slates, and similar instruments, which, if they 



do not sharpen, must dull the wit — files used the wrong way. 1 have 
seen no gymnastics, no course of muscular and sensory training, no 
series of acts of imitation, no manual exercises. I must have missed 
the exercises of speech, which should not be omitted in a school for 
idiots. 

Girls and boys are educated together ; most of them live at homie 
or with some friend, coming to the institution only during instruction, 
and, when sufficiently advanced, spending part of their time where 
they are apprenticed preparatory to leaving the institution. I am 
sorry to say that I saw no playthings. Life is not only studious, but 
it looks serious at Gladbach; two facts reflecting the social condition 
of the surrounding population. Accordingly, as soon as possible the 
idiots are set to work, the girls housekeeping and sewing, the boys 
hewing, spading, etc., in the grounds of the institution; in bad 
weather all making baskets, hosiery, list-shoes, etc., for the trade. 

A cent is one cent, says the proverb. Absurd ! It may be a 
dollar or an eagle. Wherever, as in Germany, work is paid for in 
copper, silver is retained by the tradesman, and gold is hoarded by 
a landed or military aristocracy. The idiots have not yet secured 
the gold, and work hard for the copper. Once earned, I believe it is 
applied, as far as it can go, to their comfort. However, these chil- 
dren look well; I could not say happy, for they look happy, only 
when they are happy. The German education of idiots ruay be thus 
summed up — instruction, occupation, no training of the functions, 
no relaxation by playthings and pleasure. I am aware that Sagaerl, 
Linarts, and Kratz have higher ideas ; but other schools are lower 
than that of Gladbach, which isforme:the representative of the aver- 
age German institutions for idiots. If I am mistaken, I should like 
to be corrected. 

33. Belgian and Dutch Schools for Idiots. In Belgium I 
saw but two institutions for idiots. In Gheel about fifteen idiots were 
set free according to the remarkable system of management of the in- 
sane in that village; and consequently, nearly every one of them is 
a type of individuality. One, Adrien Jack, shows real talent for or- 
namentation, otherwise low in idiocy. There is not room here to de- 
scribe his brother and the others. I should not be surprised to hear 
that Dr. Bulkens awakened to the importance of the work, and 
tempted by his exceptional opportunities, has, since our conversation, 
organized a school for idiots on a "familial" plan, somewhat analo- 
gous to the one he uses in the treatment of his 1,600 insane patients. 
— Bulkens died since ; no small loss. 

In Ghent, the celebrated hospital of Guislain contains, besides 470 
insane inmates, 70 idiots, of which 30 paralytics and gateux, and 40 
who are able to go to school. The school, formerly organized for the in- 
sane by Guislain, resembles those founded by Leuret at Bicetre,and Tre- 
lat at the Salpetriere, — contemporary conceptions, adapted to the in- 



— 87 — - 

sane, but inappropriate for idiots. Thus, in fhe Guislain school, the 
idiots learn to write, read, and cipher, if they can. But there are ^no 
gymnastics, no training of the senses, no drawing lessons, none of 
the specific forms of education corresponding * to the native incapaci- 
ties of the idiot. The succes^sor of Guislain, Dr, Ingels, is well aware 
of these deficiencies ; but what can he do when Frere Thomas says 
No ? He IS the same "Brother" who overrules Dr. Arthaud at 
Lyons, at the hospital of the Anticaille, and wherever, under cover 
of humility, he has usurped the overwhelming power. 

In Holland this pressure has been set aside, and men can do 
what they think right. The exercise of freedom has developed in 
this litde nation a marvellous sense of the proportion to be kept be- 
tween the means and the object; a proportion of which their school 
for idiots offers a correct example ; marvellous, considering the 
superfluity, or the scantiness, of the means elsewhere applied to the 
same object. 

The institution for the education of idiots was founded at the 
Hague, under the patronage of the late Queen of Holland, with 
the concurrence of Hirsch, the great teacher of the deaf-mutes at 
Rotterdam, and of Schroeder von der Kolk, the physiolo- 
gist. 

When I visted the school, it was — and happily is yet — under 
the judicious management of Professor Moesveld. It accommoda- 
ted twenty-seven girls and forty boys of various ages, and educated 
them together m all the grades. Twenty-five of the number were 
day-pupils, who went home at night ; but a larger number left the 
class-rooms between lessons, to spend part of their time in the shops 
of the neighborhood, learning a simple trade, such as making cigars, 
mats, chair-bottoms, etc. This is evidently the result of what may 
be called the policy of the Dutch plan of education : of keeping 
alive the family -feelings and habits in the parents, as well as in the 
child ; of habituating the neighbors, and pardcularly the children, to 
look kindly upon the idiot; of giving him habits of industry under 
kind supervision ; of assisting him first as a helpless apprentice, later 
as a defenceless helper ; of giving confidence to the idiot, who is 
naturally or by experience apprehensive of contact with wit and 
craftiness. They seem to consider here, that the idiot loses more 
than he gains, by bartering his family-feelings and his friendly associ- 
ations in labor, for a litde reading, ciphering, drawing, and improved 
standing before a public oftener supercilious than benevolent. Ac- 
cordingly, they have tried to secure for him the advantages of the 
school for learning, and of the family and neighborhood associations 
for sociability and happiness. 

To obtain the moral effects of this plan, the school is situated 
in the center of the city ; it is of easy access, in the midst of the 
aboring population, so that the children may be in and out, taught 



inside or sent to work outside, without trouble or more loss of time, 
beyond what is required for an airing. 

The institution may be described as a collection of old, but 
Holland-clean residences, connected by cheap sheds, appropriated 
for gymnastic exercises, of which the doors and windows open to the 
sun. The gardens in front have been made into one yard, well 
drained and graveled ; fine trees, with tops fan-spread, have been 
spared at a distance from the buildings. In fine weather, these grounds 
supply room for active training and play; a compensation tor the scant- 
iness of the apartments. If the institution is not showy in its buildings, 
it is rich in the essentials of a school. It employs nine teachers, 
male and female, besides numerous servants for sixty-seven pupils, 
only a part of whom are residents. The children are treated with 
quiet kindness, and great pains are taken to make them write and 
read, and particularly speak, which seems here the touch-stone of 
success in educating them, the elementary notions of objects, — form, 
color, usage, or composition — are not neglected; but an appropriate 
occupation, and through it a steady habit to do something produc- 
tive of good, is the desideratum to which the main efforts tend. Ac- 
cordingly, the children are well cared for, not only in the school but 
out of it; not only for their present wants, but for their future posi- 
tion and happiness. The superintendent and his efficient (not figure- 
head) trustees are in direct communication with families willing to 
take an idiot as an apprentice, at first for a few hours daily. If the 
arrangement succeeds, they examine the pupil, ascertain his progress, 
the quantity of labor exacted, and the general and moral character 
of his associations ; and when, little by little, the ties which connect 
the child with the institution are naturally severed, they feel, that 
they have not only educated their charge to the best of his and their 
ability, but left him in the best social circumstances. We notice this 
object, and this sanctification of human efforts here, more than any- 
where else. 

Each of these institutions will leave on the mind of the visitor 
its peculiar impression ; in one he feels the motive to be the pride of 
the superior officers ; in another, the happiness of the children ; in a 
third, a desire for theatrical effect ; in a fourth, a sincere Christian- 
ity ; in a fifth, a cold restraint upon the recipients of care or of alms. 

At the Hague you feel that the children are educated with the 
intention of preparing theni for positions which will suit them best in 
a society of kmd practical people. Epileptics are not admitted ; that 
is practical, too. 

Thus, we have here in close contact two very different modes 
of comprehending our subject. On the eastern side of the Scheldt, 
idiots are educated as brothers and sisters, as near home as possible, 
are cared for by women, and prepared for a future commensurate to 
their powers and to their desires, in not uncongenial society. On 



89 

the western side, male idiots — I have not seen the girls — are shut 
up, in the hope of receiving a minimum of education — which they 
do not — , and without hope of seeing a mother's face — mstead of 
which they see a male keeper's. The Dutch is the common-sense 
system; the Belgian is called the religious and Jiospitalier. 

34. French schools for idiots. Not only did the French 
open the first public school for idiots in 1841 — 42 at the Hospice 
des Incurables de la rue St. Martin, since transferred to Bicetre, but 
they produced the philosophical history of the Education du 
Saurage de V ^veyron and the classical treatise on the Trciite- 
ment ^ Moral, Hygiene et Education des Idiots— t^^o books 
whose originality and priority, arc not contested. How is it, then, 
that, with such odds in their favor, the French officials feel so nervous, 
when they are asked for a permit to visit their schools for idiots ? 
There was a time when, after such visits, Horace Mann and George 
Sumner would write home, that Massachusetts could not do a min- 
ute longer without a school for idiots, and the South- Boston school 
was voted into existence ; Sagaert, inspired by the reports of the 
Hopital des Incurables, opened the school at Berlin ; Prince Albert 
created Earlsvvood ; Guggembul was the only one who never heard 
or read about Bicetre, and behaved accordingly. 

35. School for idiotic boys at BiceTRE. Why, then, 
ashamed of that school ? For a third of a century, it has had the 
same unique teacher; the same two uniformed attendants, cap in 
hand ; the same musicians playing as if they were deaf, though 
only blind ; the same school-material, old benches, unique black- 
boards, &c. ; we had almost said the same pupils, so general is 
the sameness. Everything is preserved as with Rip Van Wmkle. 

Let us look more closely. There are sixty-four children ; some 
idiots, to be sure, even gateux; but fifty-two epileptics. Everybody 
knows the difference in regard to education. Yet a visitor coming, 
"En avaflt les nyileptiguesr' (Forward, the epileptics 1) It is 
not the fault of the teacher; it is the rule. Twenty of them play 
on musical instruments ; they can fence, with small prospect of be- 
coming as useful to their country as either of the Graniers (de 
Cassagnac). Well, we pass on, asking for true idiots. The officials 
become uneasy, like their superior of the Parvis Notre Dame ; they 
had forgotten the idiots. I do not blame the teacher personally, 
who has his hands more than full with the sixty-four pupils of all 
kinds. On the contrary, to relieve his mind, I point to a little fellow, 
(aet. 10,) and ask "What is the matter with him?" "A very low 
idiot." "Is he educated ?" "Impossible!" "Imitative?" "He is 
not." "Move his fingers on command?" "He would not even 
look at you." I begged permission to bring the boy to the black- 
board. Putting a piece of chalk in his hand, having one in mine, 
I drew a vertical line — he drew another ; a horizontal one on top 



90 — 

of the first — he put his second line in the same position ; an oblique 
line between both was followed by him in the same direction. There 
was a triangle drawn by the boy who "could do nothing;" and his 
eye had brightened, demanding more exitement. I made him imi- 
tate some movements of my fingers. For charity's sake, I did not 
want to go further, and understood — Rip Van Winkle. He awakes, 
sees his rifle, tries to take hold of it ; but, at his touch, its form 
crumbles. So, in Bicetre, we had seen the form {imago) of the 
school for idiots ; all seemed real, but it fell apart the moment we 
tried to take hold of it. Teacher, attendants, children, objects were 
gathered there, as formerly, in the shape of a school; but the co- 
hesive idea of physiological education no longer cemented the parts. 

This is said in justice to the philosophical idea, which, if it has 
dwindled to a shadow here, has become a living thing again further 
on. Let me say, that the children of Bicetre — I do not say idiots, 
since they are mostly epileptics — are provided for at the public ex- 
pense, kindly treated by their keepers, Avell fed by the administration, 
and worked moderately, though not in view of an apprenticeship. 
As for their teacher, M. de la Porte, his devotion to such a task, his 
power of keeping in adjustment the pieces of that machinery — a 
school for idiots minus its spirit — his uniform kindness and endur- 
ance, entitle him to credit for uncommon strength and faithfulness. 
Yet the dreary task must have its attraction in the fascinating hope 
of doing some good to the motherless idiots of the French hospitals 
for the Salpetriere will furnish a higher example of devotion to them 
than Bicetre. 

2,^. School for idiotic girls at the SALPeTRieRE. Although 
there had always been a number of children among the large female 
population of the Salpetriere, no special school was appropriated to 
them ; and they certainly received no special training touching their 
infirmity, until the success of the school of Bicetre rendered unavoid- 
able the establishment of a similar one for girls at the Salpetriere. 
We are not concerned with a history of this school, only with its 
present working and with the results as they appear to an outsider 
who thinks he understands the subject. 

The school is kept in a low and dilapidated building, without 
partitions, with windows and doors whose cracks are blessings. This 
mean and unique class-room is (now divided into two) encumbered 
with benches and a few desks ; some ■ charts and pictures hang on 
the wall. There is no room for exercises of imitation, nor for co- 
ordinate and group movements ; there is a narrow space in front of 
the blackboard. Children can only stand or sit or — fall, a privilege 
not easily denied to epileptics; and there are twenty- five of them 
among the fifty pupils. — The other half is composed of idiots of 
various grades, some aflicted with hemiplegia and other accessory 
infirmities. 



To grapple w illi these anomalies, and to educate these children 
from the stand-point of tlieir indiwdual incapacity, there is one 
teacher. It would be more correct to say the half of one, since one- 
half of her time is consumed in attending the fallmg epileptics, and 
in other cares exacted by such a medley of infirmities. I have seen 
her during a short visit, twice leave a lesson to take the head of an 
epileptic between her knees, to protect it durmg the fits from being 
mjured by striking against the furniture, and then resume teaching. 
For twenty-eight years Mile. Nicolle has done this work, at a salar\- 
of 30 francs ($6) a month. Recently, she has been given for an 
attendant a half-witted inmate of the hospital. After six hours in 
the school, her favorite toi^ic of conversation is tiie improvement of 
the means of educating her children. In this she sometunes suc- 
ceeds by the intensity of iier good will, and sometimes fails, as in the 
adoption of they; //<>// ^y//////?7V, or mimicry of letters and words, a 
favorite method in France, but requiring different signs for difterent 
languages, and inferior in other respects to the risible SpeecJi of 
Melville Bell. But Mile. Nicolle has few opportunities of learn- 
mg. No library is attached to the school ; no special books are 
supplied, no educational newspapers ; visitors are more curious than 
learned. Her only conversation is with the physician, ^'chief of the 
service" ; and what does that amount to ? . . . . He is only visiting, not 
resident. 

Dr. de Lassiauve w^ould like to converse with the good Demoi- 
selle more than any of his colleagues, about the means of improv- 
ing the children ; he contributed to the literature of the complex 
subject (idiocy, epilepsy, insanity, education) scleral valuable books 
and pamphlets; but precisely because he has a mind of his own, it is 
easy to see, when he passes through his wards, that he is there by 
toleration, and more spied upon than simply watched. This is made 
evident, when, speaking of some needed reforms, he suddenly 
changes his voice to a whisper, and when, approached by one of the 
nobodies in authority, he presses the arm of his visitor and says, "I 
will tell you later." (He has since been obliged to resign). 

I have witnessed the painful effects of this administrative terror- 
ism over men of science in several places, as at the Anticaille, (Ly- 
ons), and at the hospital of Charenton, where the physician made 
sure that two doors were shut between us and oflicial listeners before 
he dared to speak his thoughts. Under such pressure, progress can- 
not flow even ; it must explode. 

I heard of a convent in the south where idiots are kept; I 
visited a private school for* idiots, managed, under the walls of Bi- 
cetre, by Madam and M. Baetge, who are said to have some sixty 
pupils. After waiting a long time, I was shown a few pupils, their 
writins; and drawing, but none of their active traininc^, nor the gen- 

(9) 



cral aspect of the institution — its face. It would have been intei-cst- 
ing to compare the physiognomy of the private schools for idiots at 
Gentilly, France ; at Normanfield, England ; at Barre, Massachu- 
setts ; and at Lakeville, Connecticut, not only among themselves, 
but with the public institutions of the same class in the same 
countries. Drs. Bourneville, Charcot, and others, having recently 
visited the English Institutions for idiots, it has been decided to or- 
ganize something like them in France ; after thirty-five years spent 
to demonstrate that it is easier to steal an idea than to comprehend it. 

37. English schools for idiots. These schools grew from 
the initiative of Miss White, of Bath, in 1846; the article on idiocy 
m Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, 1847 '> ^^e opening of the Parkr, 
House-School, Highgate, by Madam Plumbe, and Drs. Gascel, An- 
drew Reed, and Connoly, under the presidency of Sir George Car- 
roll, lord mayor. Money did the rest. Essex Hall, Colchester, was 
given ; and on the corner-stone of the Earlswood Asylum ;£'io,ooo 
were offered. So much for English public spirit. 

2,2,. Eastern Counties Asylum for Idiots and Imbeciles, 
Essex Hall, Colchester. — There were in this asylum ninety-eight 
idiots — sixty-seven males and thirty-one females. Though it does 
not differ much in composition from other institutions of that kind — 
that is to say, it has about the same proportion of idiots, imbeciles, 
(J a ten X, para- and hemi-plegics, &c. — one can feel here a kind of 
predominance of the motionless and aged. In this respect, too, 
each institution has its own character, which the visitor feels almost 
from his entrance ; and when entering Essex Hall, one feels that it is 
eminently an asylum and a retreat. 

This peculiarity noted, let us look at the routine ; not for itself, 
but for a few of its features. In this school they have a great deal 
of finger and imitation exercise which prepares to pupils for draw- 
ing and handicraft. In the field, emulation and activity are excited 
in competitive weeding ; and at home, the self pride and taste of the 
children are stimulated by competition in the art of dressing them- 
selves, Ike. The inmates look placidly contented, and leave the im- 
pression that their superintendent W. Willard and the trustees of 
Colchester mean to have them so. 

39. The Earlswood School, in Surrey, a suburb of the great 
metropolis, is a much more pretentious affair. In size and in num- 
ber of pupils, Earlswood has no equal. It has had all the advan- 
tages that money can bring to the realization of an idea ; therefore, 
if this all but royal institution does not stand first, it is not, as with 
the French schools, because the idea str jiggled vainly against penury 
and oppression, endeavoring to come out from its immateriality into 
the world of substance ; no, it is because the idea was yet immature 
among the English, when their purse and will were, as usual, ready. 
They had determined to have the largest institution for idiots, and 



they have it, — to build a monumental school, and here it stands. 
So much for an external antithesis to Bicetre and the Salpetriere ; 
but inwardly the oldest have the advantage of having furnished the 
young institution their worst models. Like Bicetre, Earlswood is 
managed by trustees — the physician subordinate, the teachers sub- 
dued — a machine run by men-power, instead of an organization 
resting on woman's tenderness and quick perceptions, and philos- 
ophically directed by one familiar with the latest investigations of 
anthropology. 

Even though wishing to do so, I could not give an exposition 
of the course of training in all the schools for idiots ; but I can, for 
each, map out, as being done or neglected, certain points in their 
mode of education which will, in due course of this survey, appear' 
as the summits of the sur\^eyed grounds. According to this plan 
— which may have no other ment than its necessity — I have al- 
ready brought into prominence some features of the method ; and I 
will exhibit two more about the mode and manner of the teaching 
at Earlswood. 

Modus doCCJldi. In a class of about sixty young pupils, read- 
ing was taught to a few in the front ; while in the rear sat the greater 
number, slate in hand, with orders to copy a model letter set before 
them. 

Let us fii^t premise that they were a well grouped set of low 
though educable idiots — such a group as could only be formed out 
of a large collei^tion, and by a judge, probably Dr. Graham, the 
physian-in-chief, who was absent during my visit. The moment 
that I saw them a series of questions arose in my mind : Was it 
possible for these children to draw that letter ? first, at such a dist- 
ance from the master ; third, on a slate balanced on the knees ; 
fourth, with a pencil hardly leaving a trace on a surface, shppery 
from long use ; fifth, with a feeble and unsteady hand for want of 
previous exercise, and still more on account of uncertainty in com- 
prehension, and from the difficulty attending any process of reasoning 
in children, having lived so long in nihilism and acted by pure au- 
tomatism ? The answer to all these questions was on the slates. 
These were covered with wandering lines, hardly visible, whose char- 
acter — where any could be distinguished — was a tendency to re- 
enter at various angles the center of the plane, after meandering in 
what we shall call curves, simply because they were not straight 
lines. Indeed, nothing could be more expressive of the uncertamty 
of the hand and of the mind, than these, at first sight, unmeaning 
lines ; for they spoke eloquendy. They told that at this point of 
the teaching, the teacher must be close to the pupil ; his hand must 
move in the desired direction, to make the idiot's hand move like- 
wise, as if it wero the shadow ; the plane, besides being steady, 
mast present itself almc.'^t unavoidably to the ^^■andering gaze ; the 



pencil must easily leave a strong delineation; the required lines must 
be simple, and their succession in accordance with the natural order 
of their generation on the plane. Every one of these condidons of 
success — let us say more — of these elements of teaching idiots to 
draw and to write, was scrupulously avoided in Earlswood. Singu- 
larly enough, they were blundering at the point, where the teacher 
of Bicetre thought nothing could be attempted ; so that, at this di- 
viding line which separates routine teaching from physiological 
TRAINING, the English could not see the line. — the Frenchman 
felt it, and knew that he did not know enough to cross it. 

Earlwood, five years later, presented a more natural appearance ; 
class after class, headed by female teachers, commanded attention. 
One could see that the exercises were directed toward some deficien- 
cies of activity or of understanding, insdead of being a clumsy, imita- 
tion of a primary departement ; and a common animus was felt to 
pervade the details of the curriculum. The children were generally 
interested, as well as the teachers — each with an earnestness of her 
own. The one I had occasion to criticize in 1873 was there, one of 
the most efficient : it touches us to the quick, when in a defile of 
that sort, we see the "old guard." 

The Assistant Physician who showed me through, spoke of some 
fine preparations of brains of idiots whose status and progress had . 
been carefully noted during several years. These complete mono- 
graphs will help to establish the relation of deficiencies of organs to 
deficiencies of function. 

A matter of great interest taught at Earlswood, but not exclu- 
sively, — for I have seen it in the Pennsylvania training-school for 
feeble-minded children, managed by Dr. Kerlin, — is the teaching 
OF BUYING and SELLING in a storc-class-room, where the children 
are alternately buyers and sellers. In the New York State School 
for Idiots there is not such formal teaching ; but the children who 
can do so, are sent into town to make small purchases, m order to 
exercise their judgement in regard to the money- value of things. 
This teaching is rendered the more necessary, as the institutions for 
idiots become larger and more separated from the world. For, if 
the street-abandoned idiot, or the one cared for — but not educated — 
at home, or the one free in his movements between school-hours, is 
left liable to do wrong and to be wronged — he meets, as a compensa- 
tion, with opportunities of witnessing many transactions — and particu- 
larly of comprehending the commercial characters of exchange — im- 
possible to enumerate ; beginning, if you please, with the small op- 
portunity of buying candy or chestnuts for a penny. But the idiot 
shut up in a perfectly organized, self-feeding machine, has no oppor- 
tunity of conceiving the reciprocities of life ; he cannot help feeling 
that the world — the only world he knows — is made for him, and 
that it is for him to receive without rendering compensation ; hence 



he grows up, deprived by blind charity of the feeling on which hinges 
morality ; and, when grown up, his egolized countenance deprives 
him of a good deal of legitmiate sympathy. 

Another fault of large mstitutions is training children for show, 
in two ways : In each group or class of idiots are inserted some al- 
most ordinary children — epileptic, choreic, or hemiplegic — who are 
pushed forward at the expense of the time and skill w^hich should be 
devoted to the boiia-flde idiots. The spurious ones answer for the 
rest, to difficult questions. But even this concession — of which I 
have seen no trace in the school of Surrey, though I have of the 
next — does not satisfy the craving of the mass of visitors for some- 
thing wonderful ; the public must be served by the idiots with all 
kincls of sauces — musical, arithmetical, architectural &c. With more 
money^ and time stolen from the legitimate training of all the pupils, 
It is easy to tind among them some one with a gift salient over the 
wTeck of the other faculties, and to set them up as the great attrac- 
tion for idlers and a living prospectus for the school. They are, and 
will be, nothing else. The gift thus developed, at the expense of 
their own, and of the general training, will never serve the gifted; it 
can but be wondered at, and they, being the more pitied for it. 
This evil practice is not confined to Earlswood ; other schools for 
idiots have their pet mathematicians, &c. ; good-for-nothing, ordin- 
ary schools and universities, too, cultivate these unhealthy products. 
Once used for show, the child is used up for life : This is not educa- 
tion, but holocaust. 

40. Lancaster school. The Lancaster institution was hard- 
ly finished, when I visited it in 1873. It is built on a scale which re- 
calls to the mind that of Columbus, Ohio. Like this, it is richly en- 
dowed with money, and with pleasure and farming grounds ; unlike 
it, it is erected and endowed by private citizens, M. DeVitrey at 
their head, who, like true English gentry, believe in self and do not 
beg from tne govern n^.eiit. These fine buildings contain about three 
hundred pupils, and may accomodate six hundred. The school has 
a physician for its chief, and a large body of female teachers and 
attendants, as m America. The teaching does not differ much from 
ours, although it is yet more scholastic in form. The director, Dr. 
Shutdeworth, seems determined to carry it strictly on the physiolo- 
gical plan. I think, he will partially succeed, though there are diffi- 
culties in his way ; I mean doctrinal ones : for instance, in Lancaster, 
as in other parts of England, they do not seem to attach sufficient 
importance to that period of the education which corresponds in the 
idiot, with that which I will venture to call the building mania in 
the infancy of peoples. If we can make the pupil enter upon this 
period, and if we awaken that taste in him, he may, through it, be 
carried to the conception of higher combinations of parts to form 
a whole ; besides acq airing, in various attitudes, operations 



— 96 — 

and manipulations of the materiel, the physical aptitudes compre- 
hended in the word dexterity. 

At the threshold of the school proper, they do not seem to 
understand that filiation, and therefore that rational progression, 
which gives precedence to the systematic movements of the body 
— early concentrated in the hand — over drawing, of drawing over 
writing, of writing over reading; it is almost the reverse order that 
obtains, unless, as in the majority of nistances, there is no order at 
all, either practiced or suspected. So much for the innocence of 
the teacher of innocents, (name of the idiots m the Alps; also 
Chretiens, cretins. ) 

A more serious obstacle to the plans of the young and capable 
superintendent are the English customs, winch stand in the way like 
dolmen. At first glance, I could see that one of them was incorpo- 
rated m the new building, in the shape of a magnificent dining-room 
for a thousand people, or so. From the gallery above, it looked like 
a sea, whose undulating billows were figured by the alternate benches 
and tables ; when the three hundred pupils came and sat close to- 
gethei, they darkened only a small square of this area. All was 
orderly and neat along these long rows ; but how could the children 
enjoy such automatic eating otherwise than in the sensation of filling 
up ? What idiots desire as much, and need more than ourselves, is 
to take their meals around a circular or, better, an oval table, 
grouped by affinities ; their attendant acting the part of the mother, 
and the best (in both senses) pupils helping the helpless, thereby 
giving to themselves and to others a tangible example of practical 
morality ; instead of this, the fine hall becomes that communistic 
manger, which it is in many celebrated colleges. 

41. Norman-Field School. — England looks nowhere more 
proud than in her litdenesses and infirmities ; when she is great, her 
grandeur does not need padding. The pride here referred to is well 
illustrated by the sumptuousness of her retreats for the insane of 
BLOOD, and her school for idiots pur-sang. The institution of Nor- 
man Field IS a model of this kind. It has the other merit of being 
supervised by one of those rare men who have taken hold of the 
subject of idiocy in some of its relations to anatomo-physiology, and 
managed by one of those ladies, who make doubly sure the success 
of their husbands. Dr. Langdon Down, w^hen at the head of Earls- 
wood, made extensive researches on the malformation of the mouth 
of idiots, and has since embodied them in a valuable book. MM. 
Th. Ballard and Callaway claim for themselves and for Connolly the 
priority of such observations, and of the demonstaation of the arrest 
of development of the sphenoid m idiots, &c. ; and Bourneville, in 
his memoir on the condition of the mouth of idiots, quotes twenty 
passages from the French book, Traitewcnt moral, hygUne et 
nlt/catio?) des idiots (Paris, 1846); and says (page 7) that (Lang- 



don Down could claim the priority of this observation, if Seguin had 
not preceded him by more than fitteen years." Seguin knows by 
experience how often number two forgets the name of number one, 
expresses his approbation of the work of Down, and hopes that its 
author, being now at the head of an institution where mony is plenty 
and individual observation possible, will soon be able to complete 
his work by applying his anatomical researches and mensurations, 
to the practical teaching of speech to idiots, and to the correction 
of the defects, imperfections, and difficulties of speech met with in 
ordinary schools. For this complementary labor, Norman Field is 
the place, and Dr. Langdon Down seems to be the man : the last 
becomes the first, when he does best. 

42 — I was very sorry that I could not visit in 1877 the Scotch 
institution of Larberg, whose Supenntendent gave so much hclai to 
our last visit of Lancaster, nor the Institution of Dublin ; but it was 
my pleasure and profit, to see twice the Metropolitan District Asylum 
of Clapton, a provisional establishment, now vacated by the transfer 
of its 326 inmates to the new Institution of Darenth, — the plan of 
which is recommended by the London Charity Organization 
Committee as a model for the other asylums to be erected for Idiots 
around London. 

There was a covered play-ground, heated by warm w^ater for 
the gloomy days; and beautiful open grounds, where — when the 
English sun shines — and it shines oftener, than it gets credit for — , 
the children spend most of the time on the grass, under cover of tall 
old shrubs ; the youngest and most crippled with their nurses ; others 
playing or lounging ; the bulk attending school and going through 
their various exercises in the open air with the utmost propriety. 
The exercises and studies are varied as in Columbus, and the half- 
hour rotation system reminds one of Syracuse, but with an over- 
whelming British personality. All teachers are females except the 
gymnast. There are five classes or rather groups, in which 130 
pupils attend in the morning and in the after-noon ; 79 attend for 
lialf the time; 57 one hour and a half in the morning and in the 
after-noon, 4 attend occasionally. 

In the intervals of these short or rare attendances, the boys 
learn tailoring and shoemaking, the girls house- work, sewing &c. 
Kindergarten-games and toys play an important part in their educa- 
tion. The children often receive presents in that line, showing that 
their neighbors understand their w^ants ; for, as their kind teacher, 
Miss Stephens said, ''many children who seem very apathetic, 
brighten at the sight of a doll." 

The Superintendent, Dr. Fletcher Beach, has completed several 
observations, and commenced more, which cannot be completed 
until after the demise of their subjects. He has also dismissed five 
cases, sufficiently improved, to take care of themselves; without 



abandoning them however, but following them up to protect them, 
if need be ; to see that their impro\ement lasts, and is sufficient to 
carry them through the world. 

43. In the meanwhile, the Charity Organization Committee, 
(which I have just named), after inquiries made in Europe, Asia, and 
America, demanded — and obtained — from Parliament the enactment 
of a law, by which England binds herself to supply the wants and 
the means of education for her idiotic children. Kentucky had 
provided for their education ; but this double gift, bestowed during 
their life-time on more than 36,000 unfortunates — whom economists 
would call houcJies-l nut lies — is a greater proof of the strength and 1 
power of a government than any heretofore given ; besides showing 
the immense moving power of morality in this so-called immoral 
world. The nation w4io will do so much for the incapable and 
needy, will do much more for her active and intelligent children ; ; 
and we hope with confidence that, in her training-scliools of idiots, 
England will evolve the best methods for educating her best men 
and women to the highest standard of excellence. 

44. Swiss Cretins. — It is only in 1877, that I saw them. As 
a kind of idiots, they interested me. Their improvement by hygienic 
and educational measures, though begun early, has not yet recovered 
from the discredit brought on it by the reports of Guggenbiihl. 
Since the Abendberg explosion there is only, to my knowledge, one 
institution of that sort in the cantons, that of Dr. Zimmer at Etoy, 
which has only sixteen pupils, capable of improvement ; though Cret- 
ins seem not as much improvable, nor by the same means as idiots ; 
but cretinism is vastly more preventable than idiocy ; its causes, as 
far as known, being tangible and modifiable. 

From my own observation, cretins, (unless imported) are neither 
found at the foot, nor at the top of the mountains, but midway. 
They do not seem to be the product of any one cause, but of a 
variety of causes. 

The soil on which they grow, is not necessarily, though frequent- 
ly, magnesian ; but the waters are almost everywhere filtered from 
snow-capped ranges. The houses, or rather huts, are overhung with 
trees or vines and covered with damp vegetation, even with mosses ; 
the doors are never kept open ; the windows, mere mole-holes, often 
not a foot square neither giving ingress to the air, nor egress to the 
animal emanations on which the inmates rely for heat. Badly and 
insufficiently fed, eating — often with their hands — from a common 
wooden trough, isolated from the world, and gathered by day on and 
by night in the same bed, with hardly enough of light from a smo- 
king Luzotte to distinguish one from the other ; it would be useless 
to search their habits for a ray of morality. Women are cumulative- 
ly employed as beasts of burden, as things to be used, and to make 
money with. Of all ages, they are sent to the vine-yard on the side 



_ 99 

of the mountain, carrying on their backs loads of manure and stones, 
digging and trimming vines all day, with insufficient food. 

Girls thus worn out when hardly of age, are sent as servants 
abroad and come back enceinte ; in which condition they are sent 
again to the mountain to dig, ill-fed, ill-treated, reproached. Soon 
sent away again, they return with another child. And what of 
these children ? Entrusted to the lowest bidder, never put to the 
breast, hardly nourrished, never washed, only wiped and beaten, no 
carresses, no bright look nor smile meeting their eye, left in the cold 
and in the dark : their temperature falls below the norm of the 
species ; their skin hardens and thickens as in the scleroma neo- 
natorum ; the extremeties, deprived of peripheric circulation, shrink 
and shorten, becoming clumsy and stumpy ; and the tongue itself, 
the only thing to be sucked for many a hungry hour, swollen by the 
process, thickened out of the mouth, bulges forward, and often pushes 
down teeth rendered useless by the complete privation of masticable 
food. As for the head, only low and poor, it is made to appear 
monstrous by the thick sutures of the cranium, which like the articu- 
lations are swollen after the manner of burnt alum. 

After these general remarks, it would be useless horror to de- 
scribe the cretins of Sion otherwise than by saying that, though 
each has his characteristic physiognomy and his peculiar infirmities, 
they come under a common mild standard which may be represented 
by the word "deficiency". 

There are generally several cretins in a family ; not necessarily 
born in succession, but oftener in alternation with ordinary, very 
ordinary children. Goitre is an accessory of cretinism oftener than 
cretinism is of goitre : the latter being an appendage which disap- 
pears where wine is drunk instead of snow-water. 

Not to complete, but to help the understanding of the nature of 
this disease, one must look higher in the mountains, where men seen 
only through a spy-glass, look actually smaller than ants at our feet. 
They make charcoal of old forests, whose remaining clusters of trees 
look like moss patches scattered on sand. They slide the coal down 
the mountain-sides, shyly hastening back from the scarce purchasers ; 
and if a stray chamois-hunter approaches m want of some necessity 
of life, the family run away, and shut themselves up in terror. 

Not long ago a benevolent person established a school among 
those mountainers, but several years elapsed before a child — cham- 
ois-like — could be caught in that "trap"-school ; and even now few 
willingly submit to the awful mysteries of the alphabet. — There are 
other causes at work ; but this is enough to demonstrate the influ- 
ence of the surroundings on cretinism, and how by changing these 
surroundings — physiological and educational — not only cretins may 
be improved, but cretinism must become a phantom of the past. 

(10) 



100 

45- Italian Cretins. 1 have not seen those of the Tyrol, but 
those of Piedmont. In the Hospital St. Vincent de Pole they are 
gathered in great number. Some of them do not differ from those 
oi Martigny and Sion, but the majority do : they appear as a mix- 
ture of the alpine types and of the varieties of poly-idiocy, resulting 
from hydro and micro-cephaly, chorea, epilepsy, deafness, &c., — 
hybrid inmates of our own Institutions. 

In regard to the management of these children, there is in that 
hospital so much of good and of evil blended with a venerable tra- 
dition that, where it not for truth's sake, I should refrain from re- 
vealing all. 

These children, like their congeners of our Institutions can be 
divided, almost by sight in five categories : i) Those who can do 
very little ; yet work about, mutter a few words or syllables, and help 
themselves to anything (I would not say eatable) which they can 
swallow. 2) The paraplegics, and the like, who remain where they 
are put, balancing their body back and forth, and sucking or biting 
their hands in a flood of saliva amidst unique or rhythmic groans. 
3) The idiots proper, whose characteristic is an almost general un- 
dergrowth of organs and diminution of functions. 4'* The peculiar 
cases, characterized by deprivation or excess of some aptitude, and 
which are not so varied nor so numerous here, as in more civilized (so 
called) societies. 5) The last class comprises the ordinary medley of 
epileptics, choreics, hemiplegics, r/<^-legged, ^^-armed, other wise de- 
formed, half or totally blind or mute, mental!) queer or mor-ally crook- 
ed, insane or insanoid, who variegate the monotony of the whole. 

Whatever might be said to the contisny, there never was a true 
school for idiots — except a very recent imitation of ours — ; but a 
kind of training to usefulness, extremely laudable, when it is not 
made subservient to schemes of moral depravity. 

The first category, and some children of the third, fourth, and 
fifth help part of the others to eat, dress, be cleaned, moved, &c. 
It is instructive and touching to see an idiot button the garment of 
others, when he can hardly do the same for himself, or introduce the 
wooden spoon into the mouth of companions more infirm than him- 
self, just to the point, where experience taught him that automatic 
deglutition becomes possible, he himself swallowing a few spoonfuls 
of the porridge by way of encouragement, or otherwise. 

The other employment of the less sluggish of these children is to 
assist in the manufacture of millions of tracts, whose teaching is 
threefold ; the substitution of saints to God, the incarnation of God 
in the priest, the substitution of miracles to the natural laws, which 
are God's laws. To make the cretins parties to this three-lobed 
sacrilege, in order to keep their brothers of the mountains below in 
an imbecile submission but one step remote from idiocy, is a refine- 
ment of communistic equality, which can hardly be called education 



101 



CHAPTER II. 



American Schools for Idiots. 

The schools at Barre, Syracuse^ Media^ Columbus^ and Frankfort. — Prominent 
points of training and their application. — Conclusions. 

The American schools for idiots, Columbus excepted, are not 
as large as the English, but they are more numerous; their buildings 
and grounds are as fine and large in proportion ; their teaching is 
much more feminine — that is to say, gentle, breeding more gentle- 
ness in the pupils. In details they bear a comparison, which we 
will begin by contrasting the oldest American private institution with 
the private English school of Norman Field previously noticed. 

46, Barre School. — This school, the first in America, was 
opened by Dr. H. B. Wilbur, July, 1848. Soon Boston had hers. 
Wilbur founded the New York State Institution ; other slates follow- 
ed, so that, if England has the largest charity organization for idiots, 
this republic has yet the greatest number of well-appointed schools. 

Barre is an old New England scattered village, and its institu- 
tion for idiots is a collection of well-appointed' buildings, some on 
the turf, others under the trees, or basking m the sun. The main 
structure looks from its pillared stoop over a large shallow basin of 
flowers, bordered with turf, and guarded by broad edges and lanceol- 
ate evergreens. Houses and cottages are situated on the undula- 
tions of a healthy plateau, with a saus fa QOll indicative of a family 
affair. How different from the stately mansion of Norman Field, 
where everything is reduced to a unity, and all, even idiocy, looks 
proud. 

According to my comprehension of a private institution, sev- 
eral buildings are more favorable than one to improve the condition 
of the pupils. In this almost cottage-like arrangement, the children 



103 

who come for a home find an apartment and a kind woman, who, 
to a degree, keeps house for one, two, or three of them ; while those 
more seriously crippled, and those momentarily sick, sleep and live in 
the main building, under the personal care of Madam Brown, who 
hears and comprehends their noises, and sees to their wants. Those 
belonging to these two categories are thirty - four ; and those 
who come to the school for education, thirty-six boys and girls, live 
more or less privately ; and are educated more or less individually, 
according to their wants and to their means, by twelve men and 
thirty-eight lady teachers or women assistants. This, force is the 
wealth of the place ; and with it the immobile may be moved, if 
humanly possible. 

47. New York State Institution for Idiots. — A con- 
trast to that of Barre, that of Syracuse being largely supported by 
the State, makes no difference among the pupils on account of their 
pecuniary position, but groups them according to the requirements 
of their incapacity. The compactness of the building corresponds 
with the unity of plan of the institution, and its interior divisions 
with the forms of training ; so that its architecture is like a glossary 
of the method. In this respect, this creation — without precedent — 
of the mind of Wilbur is most remarkable. The erection of this 
building, in 1854, was indeed an important event, considering the 
complex demand on the ingenuity of the constructor, and the natur- 
al pressure exerted by Stones on ideas. — For in charity, art, science, 
and education, if ideas create architecture, architecture re-acts upon 
its mother-ideas to develop, distort or kill them ; as appears by the 
retrograde influence exercised in our time on the treatment of the 
insane by the form of their asylums ; so that it is strictly true that, 
a monument erected for the development of an idea may 
hecome its empty sarcophagus. — 

This was avoided in Barre and Syracuse, both building and ac- 
commodations being non-committal in style, and yet sufficient for 
their respective destinations, as differentiated in the following re- 
marks : 

It was empirically admitted that some idiots can be better im- 
proved by general training, and some by individual training. The 
fitness of either process, exclusively applied, or its preponderance in 
education, may be deduced from the observation of special cases ; 
and m doubtful ones a trial of both processes may be resorted to, to 
determine which is preferable. But experience has shown that, aside 
from peculiarities among the laboring-classes — who know of civiliza- 
tion only by its hardships and sufferings — idiocy is found among 
them in its simplest and most easily recognized forms, the sthenic and 
asthenic, and is therefore more amenable to the influence of a gen- 
eral training, like the one given in a State charitable institution ; on 
the other hand, among the wealthier classes, idiocy and imbecility — 



103 

being the result of multitudinous causes, mostly of sympathetic im- 
pressions bearing on the womb and its modes of nutrition in preg- 
nancy — present much more varied characters, are frequently aggrav- 
ated by accessory diseases, and also complicated with semi-capacities 
and disordered instincts; they are, therefore, represented by 
these heterogeneous cases which can be favorably modified, if at all, 
by individual training. Though this multiform idiocy gives rise to 
the most interesting parts of our inquiry on the methods of education, 
we can only refer to the examples furnished by the private schools 
of Dr. Langdon Down, of Dr. Geo. Brown, of Barre, of Dr. 
Knight of Lakeville, to some rare monogi-aphs like the Rpsunu 
de ce que nous avons fait penda?it guatorze mois, by Esquirol 
and Seguin, Va.T\?>,iS2,^, or Eight Mo?it?is of the Traijiing of the 

Hand, by Miss M , from which I will have occasion to 

quote. 

It is in Syracuse that the general training received early its most 
systematic shape, in group-form, and in rotation. There this system 
embraces seven teachers, about one hundred and fifty pupils, and 
more than forty different exercises, (irrespective of the shops, field, 
garden, farm, and house occupations). These seven groups are 
made and broken every thirty minutes, six times in the morning and 
three times in the after-noon ; this is movement for the inactive, ob- 
jects for the aimless, and regularity for the unruly. The able di- 
rector of the Clapton (now Darenth) Asylum, near London, has 
adopted this rotation system, and others have more or less borrowed 
from it. 

But the culminant initiative of Syracuse — which became a law 
m similar institutions — was the complete entrusting of the children 
to female attendants and teachers; all, but the head gymnast and 
superintendent. Chief among other advantages, female vigilance 
makes it possible to keep the boys and girls togeiher at work and 
play without inconvenience, and to great advantage in morals and 
manners. 

48. Pennsylvania Training-school. — In Media the Penn- 
sylvania training-school presents a fine spacimen of training, or 
entrainement, as the French have it. About sixty children, in 
geometrical arrangement and isolated, execute movements timed by 
the piano or by their own songs, and pointed out by a monitor 
whose mdicator-pole passes from one to another of the diagramacic 
representations of exercises painted on the large frieze around the 
hall. To a person not familiar with the swiftness of the nfluence of 
example on the imitative faculties, it is perfectly incomprehensible how 
these idiots, a moment ago limp in their postures and movements, 
now assume attitudes and develop poses, some of which artists would 
not disdain. Yet this grace is as physological as their previous awk- 



104 

wardness ; the latter resulting from the absence of inward stimulus, 
the former produced by a sympathy of peripheric origin ; idiots, 
as we call them, before and above being idiots, are human beings, that 
is, individuals capable of being sympathetically connected with their 
kind ; the link is to be found — that is the key to their education — 
through general training. 

The hand receives a great deal of attention in Media. It is 
exercised by initiation, and in the symmetric occupations of the kin- 
dergarten. It has to do all sorts of things, from picking up and 
carrying stones, bricks, wood, dirt and coal, to the minutiae of 
house-work. For the sake of its education, no machine is used to 
do what the hand can do ; time is no object but the acquisition of 
dexterity is. That is the secret of the creditable display of hand- 
work made by this Institution at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhi- 
bition of 1876. The diminutive imitation of utensils was much ad- 
mired, and had this mterest, among others, that they bore a strikmg 
analogy of taste or style, to the ceramic of "the South Americans, 
and of the circum-aegean prehistoric artists. 

49. Ohio State training-sehool. — In the Ohio State msti- 
tution for idiots at Columbus may be seen fine illustrations of a sim- 
ilar training of the hand, arriving at the same results of totality, 
though by different processes. For, before the hand can be trained 
in general imitation-exercises — please bear in mind the clumsy, and 
unmanageable hand of the idiot — it must receive a patient individ- 
ual training of its totality and of its several parts : These hand- 
movements, — which proceed exclusively from the spine, — which are 
the result, first, of a delicate sensory perception ; secondly, of a 
localized volition ; and thirdly, of a controlling muscular sense, 
(leaving in the shade some intermediate agencies). They become 
more and more subordinate, till a single phalanx of a finger cannot 
be moved without the previous exercise of the higher faculties ; and 
groups of children cannot imitate the smallest movement of the hand 
of the teacher without a concurrence of volitions and neurosies — 
which is human electricity in action. (But our remarks become so 
general, that they apply to the training in all the schools, named or 
not, which follow the*physiological method. 

50. Some Points of the physiological training of Idiots. 
a", The idiotic hand is as idiotic as the brain, since the functions 
of the peripheric nerves are as much affected as those of the cen- 
ters. Too much care and time cannot be bestowed upon the making 
of that hand. When a child begins to imitate movements of to- 
tality, the teacher sets him apart to make him imitate those of the 
arm, wrist, fingers, &c., gradually ; simple and slow at first, then 
rapid and complicated. When two children have been evenly drilled 
in these movements a third one slower than they may be placed be- 
tween them in the exercises, to be carried on {entrain^) by the 



- — 105 ■ 

swiftness of perception and volition of his mates; several such 
groups being brought together {rapproch^s) are formed in front of 
the teacher, either in a gentle curve or in two or three rows, and ex- 
ercised in all the details of the most minute and most difficult move- 
ments of the hand. When the nervous strain on the children be- 
comes evident, the exercise may be transformed into one of larger 
movements, not only of the hand and arms, but of totality, which 
require scarcely any attention, and occupy without tension or 
fatigue. It is said of billiard-players and of fencers that they must 
use the cue and the foil every day ; likewise these children under 
training ought to have their hands daily exercised ; and, as in some 
schools, every exercise begins and ends with prayers, I would suggest 
as frequent hand exercises, in which the powers of perception, voli- 
tion, and execution would be drilled to their utmost rapidity and 
precision. But if the teacher command these exercises without in- 
spiration, as if flowing from him by routine, they would in the 
same ratio be routine-work for the pupils, melting their higher facul- 
ties into a deliquescent automatism. 

A good teacher of idiots comprehends this and acts accord- 
ingly. ''I have neglected the Personal Imitation of the hand, 
for a lime," writes to me Miss Mead, "and my pupil shows it. I 
find that it is of infinite value to him, and will neglect something else 
sooner than this." 

My previous illustrations were from public institutions ; the last 
will be from this perspicuous private teacher. Her pupil is a boy 
of seven years, healthy, swarthy, and unclean, not unpleasant, but 
unmanageable ; who speaks, but unconsciously, and repeats instead 
of answering questions. His case is one of sensorial idiocy, with 
frequent cerebral congestions manifested by sudden redness of the 
ears, and unmistakable insanoid propensities : such as that of cause- 
lessly striking his brother and directly kissing him with a sincere 
affection. (See La Main EllchanU of Gerard de Nerval, a 
pathetic monograph of the same irresistible automatism ot the hand, 
though from different origin). 

The hand of B . . . . is small and melting, as it were, under the 
gentlest pressure. Nails, short and brittle ; fingers unfinished; com- 
plete iiaccidness of the muscles, each swollen at the terminal end 
like burnt alum, their articulations as if formed by simple apposition ; 
no power, no skill in that hand, used only to eat coarsely, to beat 
and be bitten, and be shaken in frequent fits of excitement. The 
exercises instituted to train that hand aimed at efficient muscular 
contraction and articular compression, at awakening the sensibility 
ot the nerve termini urging on the movements of totality and of lo- 
cality ; at making all these functions of the hand-powers at first obey 
at command, or follow imitation (without command), and gradually 
act from necessity, desire, pleasure, and, finally, from habit. 



106 

These hand-exercises (more than forty), give, as a whole, occa- 
sion for the following remarks : They were grouped by similars and 
contrasts ; sometimes their analogies were sought, at other times 
avoided; similarly, contrasts were shunned or courted in order to 
force the comprehension and the execution of analogies. Similarly 
in exercises of strength and of dexterity, following each other ; that of 
strength first, if it only stimulated to activity ; second, if it could 
exhaust the activity by its intensity or duration, in which case the 
hand would subsequently be found unfit for a work of precision. Also 
with exercises alternately made light and heavy, or with wooden and 
iron dumb-bells, it is not well to exhaust the strength at first with the 
heavy ones, and to demand afterward precision of movements and 
of poses with the hght ones. Likewise with the contrasts to be 
established between the tactile and contractile exercises of the hand, 
in which a physiological alternation, precedence,and proportion was 
at times favorable, the reverse injurious. 

After 8 months of close conformity to these rules the teacher of 

B has succeeded in making his hand more firm and useful. 

This fated hand has lost the greatest and worst part of its automa- 
tism, striking and jerking rarely now. B partly dressing him- 
self, lacing and buttoning imperfectly and slowly, brushing his own 
clothing, maneuvering his tricycle, building in bricks or brick-shaped 
blocks, tracing straight and curved lines almost correct, and nicely 
generated from each other by successive imitation, to form figures on 
the blackboard, — uses the scissor less skillfully than the chalk but can 
not yet handle a kniie, has developed the sense of touch, better than 
that of sight. Otherwise this severe training of the hand has favor- 
ably reacted on the other functions and greatly improved his morals, 
too. And now the next progress of his hand is retarded by the un- 
fixedness of his sight ; the training of his eye will come uppermost 
in the series of functions whichhave to be created as far as their 
steadiness, voluntariness and usefulness are concerned. In its turn 
the next progress of vision will react on that of the hand, which will 
not be neglected m the mean while. 

This leads to the most general remark, that the best lessons are 
not always given directly. As the necessity of using the hand has 
indirectly forced the eye to look, so the exercises of training the 
eye will necessitate and improve certain operations of the other senses, 
and particularly of touch. This law of reflex action of one function 
on another obtains almost in every department of education, 
but in none more, than by the eiltrainevunt of pleasure in 
various forms, instituted to promote activity and even spontane- 
ity, in sluggish and passive natures. This advantage, having been 
early appreciated, was made one ot the levers of the training. Let 
us see how it touched and awakened the man in the idiot. But 
pleasure being protean,some of its forms touched him more than others. 



107 

In the lowest of these inferior beings, I have ahvays found 
traces of a propensity whose satisfaction, or even approach to satis- 
faction, gives pleasure. One must look early for that door ajar, or 
crevice, in an existence immured on all other sides. Thus it is not 
infrequent to use a peculiar taste, even a vicious one (like those 
developed in Maiacia), as a bait, direcdy to develop a better taste or 
appetence, or indirectly to induce operations of another order. 

In a different direction, one of the irresistible automatisms of 
the hand, instead of being o]3posed to a long while, even forever in 
vain, is taken hold of and directed toward a useful occupation, a 
mode of training more or less germane or correlated to the said 
automatism. The education of B.... furnished a hne specimen 
of this kind of e}itra>neme?it from, and by an automadsm which 
caused him great pleasure and verged on vice in its crude state. 
He was very fond of caressing things or persons with a feathery 
touch as described in the XXIX. obs. of Idiocy, page 376, (from 
which B. . . . differs in all other respects). This propensity was made 
the starting point of a series of tactile drills in which his touch was 
exercised to become an intellectual fact in reference to the form of 
objects hidden from sight and perceived by the hand only, and to 
the material of other objects whose feel was the only means of 
identification and recognition. To carry on this latter plan, Miss 
M — . put in a covered basket several objects of contrasting form rel- 
ative to the typical forms as far as B ... . knew them at different times. 
Oftener the objects would be chosen for their difference of tissue, 
as velvet, flannel, muslin, gauze, kid, &c.; others for their difference 
of surface only, as polished marble, stone, iron, glass, &c. Did this 
derivation, will it be said, cause the eradication of the bad habit ? 
Not completely. The same propensity exists yet, but is mainly 
occupied searching contacts more intellectual, often useful, at any 
rate made use of in the teaching to increase his knowledge of things 
mainly felt. — It was rather early in his training that B. . . . had given 
unmistakable signs of a natural appetence for flowers, and in the 
flowers for their fragrance. We began to use it as a fulcrom before 
he could walk in the street undirected. At the florist, they would 
buy the flowers that appealed the most to his sensorium, oftener 
by the smell than by the color, and he would carry it by an effort of 
his incapable hand and of his feeble will, sustained by the desire of 
enjoying it at home. There he would go of himself, take a sniff at 
it ; then, asked, tell its name, the name of the one he brought yes- 
terday, reclining near by half-faded, and of the previous ones 
already planted in the flowery garden of his reminiscence. So 
pleasure is, when possible, made the direct incentive to improvement. 
But sometimes it is not possible, that is, some parts of the training 
present no pleasurable aspect, and it becomes our duty to invent 

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108 

some accessory desire for them. At other times, the child himself 
suggests the derivative, as B. did to me not long ago. His reluc- 
tance to exercise with the balancier was not yet overcome, when he 
came at it, one day, fresh from a story told him of a pigeon, and, 
while throwing the balancier, he asked me more about it. I com- 
plied, sending and receiving the heavy apparatus all tlie while. 
This pleased him, and seemed to increase his activity. The next 
day he asked again about the pigeon, more came, and now it is his 
pleasure to bring me the balancier in order to end his day's work by 
this once dreaded exercise and more about that dear pigeon. How 
absurd, but how human! Suscitate desires, you create actions. 
However, great tact is required to select, to eliminate as well, the 
derivatives to ennui, fatigue, inattention, &c. I let myself be guided 
by this rule: When a pleasurable derivative is needed to give more 
continuity to exercises of activity, offer it during these exercises in 
the rhythmic forms; the human voice being the best, and reasoning 
the worse. But where mental or sensorial attention is demanded, 
let us trust silence, isolation, moderation of light, unity of sensation 
and of milieu, distinctness of articulation concordant to precision of 
language, and a persistence timely alternated with desirable and de- 
sired encouragements. 

Rut, above all, do not bore these children to make them 
savams. Torment them not with books, whose best could not pre- 
vent them from remaining — like ourselves — more remarkable for 
what they will continue to ignore than for what they will have 
learned. Teach them mainly by, with, and for what can make 
them happy. 

a) Entrainemen'J- by Play-things. — The school of Colum- 
bus has set the example — and others have followed it, that of South- 
Boston for instance — of putting a play-thing on the desk of each 
pupil, in order to give him a chance to play when his attention is 
not called otherwise. This toy, changed every session, may be dis- 
regarded for a time, perhaps for a long time ; but once looked at, 
it will soon be looked for, handled, made to act the part imagina- 
tion assigns to it ; and she is not a teacher, who cannot start from 
thence to establish the true relations of the child with his play-thing; 
which is for him — after his mother's breast — the commencement of 
the world. 

b) Entrainement by Music. — Few idiots are more than pas- 
sively sensitive to music, though exceptionally it may be calmmg or 
exciting, and in rarer cases has awakened melodious affinities, even 
in children deprived of the faculty of speech, (see the monograph 
XLHI in " Idiocy and its Treatment by PI Seguin," P. 404). As 
for the general impression made by school-music on these children, it 



109 

depends upon the melody more than on the composition. Some 
tunes for us very fine, make no impression on the children ; and 
others, flat for us, elate them. But why should they not have a 
different sensorium of harmony than we ? Each race has ; nay, 
every class m a community. The other doubt refers to the instru- 
ment selected. The piano may not correspond to the want of such 
institutions, except to make the time in marching, &c. ; but any 
cheap metronome would answer that purpose. However, taking a 
utilitarian view of music as it IS, the piano does good service in the 
classes of instruction in voice and speech, in the gymnasium, in the 
imitation rooms, and in the next exercise, as a motor. 

By a sort of contradiction not unfrequently met with in more 
complete organizations, the idiot, ordinarily prone to immobility, is 
delighted at the sight of other people's movement, and is often him- 
self carried into this movement. This is noticeable where dancing 
is made an habitual feature of the evening, as, for instance, in the 
Ohio State Asylum of Columbus, where the groups are formed so 
as to bring the excited with the timid, the active with the indolent, 
in order to make them move harmoniously and contentedly : so that 
even the cripples express their participation in the movement by the 
agitation of their limbs and the broadness of their smile. 

c) Entrainement by Sight. — This last observation prepares 
for the following one that : idiots are, if possible, more fond of the 
pleasures of sight than of those of hearing. I have never seen an 
idiot that was not benefited by sights, even by those which he could 
not "comprehend" as we comprehend them. His pleasure in an 
art gallery is not our pleasure, but is his; and a sufiicient one to in- 
terest him to think, to desire, and to act. Give idiots plenty of en- 
gravings and paintings. 

Bright colors and well-chosen contrasts afiect them quickly and 
rationally too, and often cause an intelligent happiness to come to 
the surface of their indifterence. This action on the mind through 
the retina is most apparent around the Christmas-tree, a touching 
custom originated for them in the asylum of Syracuse. It is, of course, 
an elaborate aftair. Parents send boxes full of presents, not only to 
their children, but to the children who have no parents. For a 
week teachers and lady friends give their spare hours to the secret 
adornment of the tree, which covers and fills the upper part of an 
immense room with hundreds of playthings, and several thousand 
pictures, candies, glass balls, mirrors, and innumerable little colored 
wax candles. When the branches are so loaded that they would 
break, if not of living pine, an afternoon is employed to set it 
ablaze, and the children, issuing from a comparatively dark room, 
are suddenly exposed to the glare and temptation of this fruition 
of brightness. At this sight, hardly one face out of fifty looks idiotic 
during the process ot distributing so many treasures — for each child 



, 110 — - 

receives several. What a lesson for the eye and for the heart ! On 
the spot, Sarah Gray, a hydrocephal, who for years could sit but not 
stand, and afterward could stand but could not walk, now glides si- 
lently along, erect, and looking as if burdened with her large ivory 
forehead, approaches a younger and weaker child, kisses her, and 
gives her her own present. Who will say that the noble women who 
spend their life in instrucdng and mothering idiots, Mesdames Ni- 
colle of Paris, Young, Cook, Wood of Syracuse, Macdonald of South 
Boston, Knight of Lakeville, Blake of Frankfort, Ky., Charles Wil- 
bur of Lincoln, 111., Doren of Columbus, O., have lost these last 
twenty and thirty years, and many younger persons their freshest 
ones at the task of making idiots more intelligent and happy ? 

d) Yet that occupation of instructing idiots by making tiiem happy 
has sometimes been condemned as in bad taste. — In the experimen- 
tal school of Germantown, Pa., a child about twelve years old would 
in the evening stand on a table surrounded by a family of idiots, 
and, dressed for the occasion, would represent, with comical voice 
and gestures, some fable or story m which children and beasts would 
play the most absurd parts. It was delightful and instructive to see 
idiots accept the impossibilities of the situations, and, through the 
conventionalities of a juvenile and colored language, pick up and 
enjoy the zest and spirit of the scenes. But these were considered 
scenes of confusion : and so they were, as far as the pupils became 
clamorous for joy, and would rise from their seats to applaud the ac- 
tor; the suppression of this innocent recreation restored the school 
to order, and the scholars, lively for once, to the dullness of idiocy. 

This Puritanism is gradually subsiding, however ; pleasure be- 
gins to be recognized as one of the stimuli of activity and morality. 
In consequence, each institution has its innocent games, and little 
theatricals or shows, in which pupils and teachers meet on terms of 
encouraging equality. Pleasure acting here, as in the kindergarten, 
like a ferment of activity. For the healthiest development is not leav- 
ened by and under human or supernatural pressure, but by expand- 
ing sympathy. We found the same agent, sympathy, to be the physi- 
ological corner-stone of morality ; and the education of idiots found- 
ed upon it to give its best results where the children are most loved. 

On another hand, idiots must not be brought up in the belief 
that all that is done for them is their due, — without due return from 
them ; an unequitable plan, which would foster an infatuation odious 
in an intelligent child, repulsive in an idiot, 

In accordance with these views, the agitation for the improve- 
ment of idiots must not cease till we have provided for all of them. 
Under the inspiration of Sir Charles Trevelyan, England has declared 
them the wards of the empire ; that is grand. In this free and young 
country, we may not be able to do so much ; though we may event- 
ually do better, by harboring their infirmities and training their in- 



- — 111 — 

capacites with more varied resources. But whatever plan is adopted 
for their reHef and improvement, their great number must not be 
made an argument m favor of an unlimited increase of communistic 
institutions. The family is the best commune. Therefore I unhesi- 
tatingly say : It is desirable that the idiots whose parents have small 
means or none with no time or room to spare for their education, be 
sent to the institutions erected and endowed for them by the State. 

It is equally desirable that the idiots whose parents have some 
means, but no room or time to spare for their training, be entrusted 
to famihal institutions where they would receive more individual care, 
and feel iPxOre at home. 

It is also desirable that families in good circumstances be offered 
the means of keeping and educating their idiotic child among their 
intelligent children, to that efifect the idiot must have the benefit of a 
special day-training-school, or of an experienced teacher. Provided 
for otherwise, that is communistically, the idiot looses more in 
sympathy than he can gain in instruction. On another hand, the 
brothers and sisters — who have no opportunity to love him, but hear 
of him as of a blot on the family name, and a mortgage on the 
family estates — soon agree to keep him away, and trust him to the 
lowest bidder — a policy by which they lose more than the idiot him- 
self; because the sense of equity once lost m relation to the defence- 
less and harmless, is lost also for their internal relations; the estrange- 
ment of the idiot is the wedge of family cheats and feuds. 

Having seen in a long practice the difference between idiots so 
estranged from home and those surrounded by natural affections (I 
have now in view a dear hydrocephal of 65; head 28 inches of 
circumference, as happy as could be ; wise and even keen in her 
ways, and whose moral sense is perfect becauce it was never hurt) ; 
I can not hesitate to advocate for such cases a home education and 
an individual training, whose object is not only to improve them as 
far as a deficient nature permits, but to make them, as far as possi- 
ble, good and happy. 

My experience in educating such pupils warrants me to say 
that this country has, more than any other, competent female 
teachers who could and will do this work (at too low a rate of com- 
pensation) under the direction of a competent physician. 

51. Conclusions. — Practically the amount of good done to 
idiot sfrom 1838 to I878 is incalculable; but the sum of good done 
to Society by awakening the consciousness of Her duties toward 
these children is greater yet. Scientifically idiocy is better under- 
stood, and its treatment has furnished results already transfered, 
others transferable to the training of ordinary children. But anthro- 
pology expects yet — mainly by its own fault — the results of the 
rapprochement (juxtaposition) of the anatomo-histologic elements 
of idiocy and of the psycho-physiological evidences furnished by pa- 



112 



tient monographs. Therein lies the treasure idiocy keeps in reserve 
— for the true student; the relation of its anomalous organs to its 
anomalous functions. In a word, what the teacher of idiots has 
already taught to ordinary children, is only the beginning of what 
idiocy must reveal to anthropology about man-culture. 



113 



POPULAR EDUCATION AS IT IS, AND AS IT SHOULD BE. 

CHAPTER I. 

The Common School as I have found it. 

52. Succeeding the Catholic school, accessory to the Church, 
—or the Lutheran and Calvinistic, adjunct to the Presbytery,— the 
common school is of recent culture, on shifting and ill-defined 
grounds, and of slow growth, owing to the immaturity of its plans 
and to the activity of its enemies. However, its beginning are glori- 
ous ; it has already its heroes and martyrs ; and it is already re- 
garded as the lever that is to raise civilized nations to a higher 
civilization, and to extricate barbarous nations from barbarism. In 
this respect, the common school is certainly a better instrument of 
true social power than the university, since it does not deter the 
young, during many years, from useful occupations and family in- 
fluence; does not encourage thinking in vacuo; nor varnish the 
incapable with a nugatory erudition, thereby creating classes diffi- 
cult to please and expensive to feed. 

On the contrary, the common school touches (ought to touch) 
all the chords of the nervous powers to harmoniously develop the 
functions into capacities ; yet leaving room for one of them to rise 
eventually to a higher level as a token of future individuality. It is 
asserted that soldiers are made for the army. Were we to say that 
the child is made for the school, the proposition would seem 
monstrous ; for it is admitted on all hands, that the school ought 
to be made for the child, the curriculum fitted to his powers. 
Such will be the criterion of our judgment of the schools to 
be presently reviewed, and of the school-improvements, whose con- 
sideration will occupy the closing pages. 

53. English popular Education was represented only by the 
appliances, books, hymns, and other music of Sunday-schools and 
Bible-classes. Why ? Mr. Gladstone has answered that question at 
Ha warden in an address on mental culture : ^" In Germany, France, 
and in many parts of Italy, there is a much greater disposition 
among the people of the country to avail themselves of opportuni- 
ties of knowledge and mental culture than in England. The mass 
of the Enghsh people is only just coming into possession of the 
blessing of a popular system of education," &c. 



114 — 

Mr. Gladstone does not say that it was he wlio had fouglit 
with success in England, and with inditterent results in Ireland, the 
battle of a " national system of education " against sectarian niflu- 
ences. Since 1873, primary and common schools have been estab- 
lished all over the country ; like ours in the size of their builduigs, but 
unlike ours in the beauty of the surrounding grounds, even in large 
cities. The same impulse extended its influence over the British 
Colonies. Australia showed in the exhibition of Paris, and the 
Province of Toronto in Philadelphia, that the popular system of 
education, far from having exhausted its resources, is just beginning 
to unfold them. It counts now (1879) fo"^ milhons of pupils. 

54. The Swedish School, in which attendance is compulsory 
for all children from seven to fourteen years, was represented by a 
model house or room capable of accomodating twenty girls and as 
many boys. A gymnasium is attached to it. It is less crowded 
with seats and desks than the American model, and infinitely less 
thai! the French class-rooms. There is a supply of fresh water for 
the pupils in the entrance-hall, and another on the desk of the teacher. 
This desk stands higher than" those of the children. At its right is 
a piano or organ, at the left a table for experimental demonstrations 
in physics, &c., the three pieces being of plain white wood of a 
simple and strong pattern. The forty desks and seats are worth 
noting. P>y ingenious and strong mechanisms, the former, slightly 
concave in front, slides nearer the pupil when he wants to write, and 
the latter can be raised or lowered to suit the size of the pupil, but 
it does not aftbrd any support to his back; a great defect. The 
walls are not allowed to remain unutilized. The one back of the 
teacher (facing the scholars) is covered with a blackboard headed 
by model letters, of which the counterparts may be found printed 
on cards contained in boxes below. The upper part of the wail is 
occupied by changeable tableaux of music, arithmetic, geometry, 
and writing-models. The wall in which are three large windows is 
thickly trophied with rifles, trumpets, drums, and the more pacific 
instruments of music, and surmounted by large geographical charts. 
On the opposite side are tastefully grouped spades, rakes, and other 
implements of labor used by the pupils ; near by, in glass cabinets, 
are specimens of corn, wheat, barley, flour, of plants, barks, &c., 
and in the next case are specimens of mineralogy and imitations 
of the principal forms of crystallization. The fourth side-wall sup- 
ports one case containing specimens of animals, birds, insects, and 
reptiles, and another of objects and of physical apparatus. The 
lower parts contain small and large draw^ers, in which lie series of 
astronomic and geological charts. One of these series is painted in 
black, and the children put in the right places little cubes on which 
the names of these places are printed ; there were also stored near 
by geometrical drawings, an immense variety of handwork made by 



115 

girls and boys and — particularly worthy of praise — pictures of fishes 
which could be equaled only in the schools of Norway and Finland. 
"Ces peuples sei/is comprennent U poissoir . In other words, 
to comprehend the nature of the fish, it seems necessary to live al- 
most exclusively with it, like it, upon it ! The Norwegian and Fin- 
nish schools do not differ much from the Swedish. One thmg is 
surprising, however, in the Finnish : it is the presence^ of two ar- 
rangements invented in 1843 at Bicetre to fix the eye of idiots; but 
ideas percolate more subtly than quicksilver. 

55. The Swiss schools resemble the Swedish in their closely 
practical aim. They may teach music more thouroughly, and phy- 
sical exercise less by plain work and more by collective gymnastics, 
like the Germans ; but they nitermingle both in a kind of general 
training which was planned in 18 10, and has since played an im- 
portant part in the unification of national characters and national 
movements. The influence of this part of education must be studied 
by all thoughtful persons and adapted to their system of training 
the youth, with the modifications demanded by national idiosyn- 
crasies. In the Swiss school, smging presents itself in three 
phases: the infantile, v/hich begins almost with the teaching 
of speech in child-like rhythms and choruses ; the gymnastic 
songs, aiding the development of the chest as well as the force 
and precision of general evolutions, (of the latter there are exhibited 
several manuscript and printed volumes ; the third phase of music 
is to teach to large gTOups those popular songs found, not only in 
print, but in the throat and ear of everybody, and running — warm- 
ing the common feelings — through the social body, as the blood 
runs and distributes a normal temperature throughout the body 
of the individual. 

Where Agassiz, Lyell, de Beaumont, Larive, (of Geneva.) He- 
bert, (of the Paris normal school,) de Candolle have studied or 
taught, and where the Alps rise fike an unavoidable text-book, it was 
to be expected that geology would occupy its natural place in the 
school. Accordingly, besides excellent elementary treatises, they 
have geological sections, represented in colored glass by Professor 
Mulberg of Aran, (capital of Argovia.) There were seen also large 
collections of botany, of mineralogy, and illustrated scientific public- 
ations adapted to school use. History is represented in vast col- 
lections of picture books ; and the national chronicles are besides 
briefly told in cantonal and federal statistics. I have said elsewhere 
how the infant-schools have been improved in Geneva and other 
places by the introduction in them of some of the kindergarten oc- 
cupations. 

A local feature of the schools scattered in the Swiss valleys, is 
the ground attached to the school, where the teacher initiates his 

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116 

pupils in the crafts of sowing, planting, grafting, protecting vegeta- 
tion from frost or heat, &c. So the village or country schools, with- 
out the high-toned pretentions of "Agricultural Colleges", teach the 
children to cultivate their birth place, and to love it through the 
natural sympathy of man with v/hat his work embellishes. This cul- 
tivation of home affections is the more necessary, since Switzerland 
is, like Italy, x\uvergne, and Massachusetts, bled of her best blood 
by emigration. 

56. In Italy, where the clergy had the entire management 
of education, seventy-six analphabetics v/ere found to twenty-four 
who could read ; they had been taught the rosary instead of the 
alphabet. Yet, at the first awakening of the Italians as a nation, 
their natural propensities showed themselves by leading the van 
of education toward the achievements of their forefathers : glass- 
ceramic in Venice, mosaic in Rome, statuary in Florence, paint- 
ing everyvv'here ; even the great art of Vesalius and Morgani seemed 
to be resuscitated in the admirable preparations of zootomy by Sag- 
gio and others. The schools best represented in the Welt-Ausstel- 
iung were those of Pistoia, for elementary drawing; of Perugia, for 
painting on vases ; of Cagliari, for orna,ments in black and white ; 
of Udine, for camaieu or grisaille ; of Ravenna, for oil-painting ; 
of Asti, for topographic charts. The most showy result of this new 
departure — besides the immovable mosaics left at home — is a people, 
of statues, in which no other nation excels the Italians in natural- 
ness. This is because, besides possessing their elegance and true 
force ot movement, they are sincere — that is, their figures do what 
they pretend to do without seeming to mind what the spectators 
think of them ; the lack of this characteristic is a most ordinary and 
insufferable defect in statues and in actors. Many French and Bel- 
gian artists possess it to a painful degree. It istrueCarpo could make 
the stone laugh and the marble cry, as none of these Italians can ; 
but there was only one Carpo, as there was but one Coustou; a 
marvellous representer of imperial immorality, as great a historian 
on inarble as Balzac and Dickens are in romance. 

Having visited Florence in 1877, I saw side by side, the old 
masters in their famed gallery and the exhibition of the works 
of living artists ; the latter showing a freedom from the former which 
augurs well for the young school. 

More striking yet, the teaching of drawing in popular schools 
has prepared youth for duty in industrial and decorative arts ; and 
children are seen everywhere trying their hands at works of taste. 
The Carrara marble and alabaster are tastefully chiseled for rich and 
poor; and the needle fixes on tapestry, velvet, satin, or coarse canvas 
associations of colors, blended only where the oriental rays begin to 
be tinged at dusk with the penumbras ot the Occident. 

Naples has her children — painters of the Vesuvius, precursors 



of the chromo-lithographs ; whilst in Venice a few old forgotten 
masters of glass-coloiing and enamel have been encouraged to gather 
apprentices, and teach them the all but lost art of fingering under 
the blow-pipe the fluid glass in a thousand forms and colors equally 
fascinating to the American girl and to the bayadere. I could not 
leave the few Italian schools I visited vvithout wishing they would 
teach more vocal music to a people whose atavism is nowhere more 
evident than in the qualities of its vocal cords. 

57. The Portuguese schools have exhibited comprehensive 
historic tableaux, somewhat in the manner of the synchronic 
tableaux of Michelet. Spain sent little of interest besides her living 
specniien illustrative of the education of the deaf-mute and the blind 
— Martni y Ruiz — and elegant writings from the school for the blind. 
Let us, however, note the school-models of anatomy of Fernando 
Veiasco, particularly a vertical section of a head in stearine. 
The decorative pottery, the nickled armors and clocks, the delicacy 
and originality of the Spanish and Portuguese gold and silver works, 
— products of tradition it may be, but which could not have been 
transmitted without a kind of education, creative of a national taste. 

58. Austria has,- besides the kindergartens and her school- 
gardens a vast system of popular institutions of learnmg, 
at the head of which is that of the Leopoldstadt. In the high- 
er and professional grades, technologica,l institutes, and academies 
of fine arts, — that of Prague sent unsurpassed cartoons of flowers in 
water-color. Hungary contributed large collections of photographs 
of plants valuable in the teaching of natural history. Bavaria, with 
less abundant materials shows the same art direction in the education 
of youth. Wuerttemberg excels in the poj^ular art of carving wood, 
of which the school is traditionally in the Hartz Mountains, and 
of which the products, pleasing by their clumsiness [/laivcP') And 
buyers all over the vv^oiid. The nearer we come to the Rhine, the 
more French tj the forms of education, and its products. Our 
limited space forbids extending these remarks, which will be con- 
cluded in the next paragraph. 

59. We will call the next group German, an expression as 
vague as the unsettled limits of the empire. It contains, if not 
the largest collection of objects of education, what is better for our 
purpose and the more characteristic, the discipline. The Prussian 
school is classical and military, being organized to train scholars and 
fighting-men. But it is easy to discern — beyond the present status 
ot these phases of training — in the French of Montaigne, nurture- ■ 
a new aspiration toward supremacy in industry, taste, and art in its 
various forms. To attain this supremacy, the German schools are 
constantly enlarging their curriculum, under the leadership of philoso- 
phical and far-seeing teachers, ^^ ho, after all, are the true Kaisers 
of Germany. She has armies of children painting, drawing, 



__ 118 

chiseling, calculating ; other armies of adolescents producing at 
the lowest rates, objects of taste, fancy, or fashion, and trying to 
be artistic. Will this last word provoke a protest from those who, 
in 1870, have seen New York girls weep because war forced on 
their shoulders the fashions of Berlin instead of those of besieged 
Paris ? But French arts and fashions were not received any better 
in Europe, even at Gaillon in the time of Primaticcio and of Fran- 
cis the First ; yet not long after, the Italian artisans, being persecuted 
by the nobility, were welcomed by Henry the Fourth, and soon 
France ruled m the arts. 

At Lyons, at the Gobelins, at Sevres, St. Gobens etc., she be- 
came the center of artistic industry and the arbiter of taste. But 
now the artisans — whose type is the Lyonnais, over-worked and de- 
formed by the hardships of industry — now that the French bourgeois 
declare that they have not killed enough of them, ('Wousu'e/l 
avons pas assez tm," said in 1873 the young red-headed Buloz to 
the writer of this paper), now the artisans, distrustful and disheart- 
ened, do not learn drawing nor practice their trade with zeal, and 
they have already lost some of their skill with the departure of the 
feeling of security; and they emigrate when they can, to escape the 
plots in which their oppressors try to involve them. Such are 
the signs of the passage of the crown of art from one country to 
another. (This pressure culminated and broke in May 1877.) 

Forty years ago Victor Cousin, in a report on public instruction, 
made a similar prophecy. Fie declared to the King and to the 
Nation that Prussia was already ahead of France in matters of edu- 
cation, and if France did not make a suppreme effort to raise the 
standard of general education, her decline was at hand, and Prussia 
would soon be the rude leader of Europe. Those who laughed at 
this prediction in 1840, tore their hair in despair in 1870. 

And yet this warning of Cousin was not the first France had re- 
ceived. In 181 1, Cuvier had recommended to tlie French Emperor the 
adoption of the plan of "the Dutch PrimariJ schools which he 
could not see without emotion and study without admiration." Let 
us therefore open for these schools a parenthesis, instead of a cliapter 
which they deserve. 

60. Dutch and Belgian Schools. — The Dutch Primary 
schools so highly estimated, and set up as models for the French by 
the great naturalist, were the realization of the plans of popular 
education promulgated in 1792 — 1794 b}^ the French Republic. 
The French had to leave Holland, but Holland kept the French 
primary school, so well adapted to her fornier mode of self-govern- 
ment and actual habits of simple equality. 

Belgium being in the meanwhile (18 14) annexed to Holland 
ought to have been benefited as well : but becoming independ- 
ent later (1830), after a fudie eftbrt at assimilation, and since labor- 



119 

ing under the disadvantage of being possessed and ruled by mitered 
Roman legates, she has remained behmd in popular education. 
Wherever her schools can be seen, as in Brussels or Antwerp, there 
are a few as good as in Holland, only more showy ; but in remote 
parts, one half the people are not taught to read — or rather, are 
taught to not read, but to believe in miracles and to obey the clergy. 
Thus it happens that Belgium now has 50 per cent more analpha- 
betics than Holland. But it must not be omitted that this lowering 
process finds opposition m lay-schools of great perfection. It is in 
one of these latter, conducted by Prof. Gallet in Brussels, that I have 
seen the first French niHre and its fractions broadly painted from 
floor to ceiling in the school-room, thus unavoidable to the sight, 
therefore to the mind. 

Impatient of the yoke, yet incapable of throwing it away, the 
Belgian Chambers have, by a recent law, provided that religious in- 
struction shall be imparted in a room set apart for it in each school ; 
and that the priests will no longer be suffered to interfere with the 
lay-teachers' work, nor to act as school inspectors, in which capacity 
they keep the teachers in their dependence. 

61. — Tiie French Popular School is the first effort at reorgani- 
zation of the French Republic of 1789. They had no time, in the 
storm, to establish it, but did better, in:enunciating its principle and 
in outlinmg^its course. 

a) The Principle. The lastj^word and testament of the 
XVIII to the XIX century was : ''// sera etabli da/is c/iague 
Canton ch la R^publique line on plusieurs ecoles priniaires, 
&€.'' The course: By the social contract, or constitution, the 
republic promised to all the children, m consideration of their loyalty, 
a moral education, mainly taught by the example of good men ; in- 
struction in the duties of citizenship ; to speak, to read, and to write ; 
some geography, notions of natural and familiar objects, the use ot 
the compass, level, lever, pulley, numbers, time, measures and 
weights (metric). The pupils were to be taken into the fields and 
workshops to see the work done and to take in it such a part as 
their strength and intelKgence vv^ould permit. The children vv^ould 
be encouraged to cultivate miniature gardens of their own at home 
or around the school ; and the normal schools liave grounds attach- 
ed, where the pupil-teachers might learn enough of horticulture to 
serve ^them in their future country homes, and to impart the same 
knowledge and taste to the village-children. For the children of the 
cities, the public gardens, collections of natural or scientific objects, 
and the art-museums were declared free means of education, access- 
ory in their use to the school proper, by the far-seeing minds of 
Laplace, Monge, Foucroy, Daunou. 

But no sooner (1795) had their idea appeared, when it was seized 
as Laocoon and his children by the hydra. The four generations of 



120 

teachers who tried to realize the idea of educating the people for the 
duties of life, have lived and suffered untold miseries during the ebb and 
flow of the late social actions and reactions. What 1 have seen and 
what I have to say from 1873 to 1877 belongs to the reaction; I 
hope the last year has opened a better era. 

b) School Material. The French schools exhibited at Vi- 
enna quite extensively, but not equally. The first object attracting 
attention was the vast model of the manufactory of school-appara- 
tus for Paris, which turns out everything made of wood^ iron, or 
plaster for schools. It is useless to enumerate them; and, besides 
all was not shown at Vienna ; tliere were missing things which could 
be seen only at the establishment in the He Louvier, where there 
were piles of Christs, angels, virgins, cherubs with swords, flambeaux 
&c. One must see these casts, ignomininously piled in the expec- 
tation of becoming sacred, and of being worshiped in their turn, m 
order to comprehend the depth and distance at which the children 
of France are kept from the true God ; and conversely, why men 
profess atheism rather than to acknowledge such deities. From the 
manufacture of this Olympus, whose gods recall the expression of the 
ferocious art of Z.urbaran Avithout his genius, let us come down to 
that of the desks and benches. 

They are made ot the most durable material (oak), and of a 
form to accomodate the greatest number of pupils : straight, long 
benches without back-supports, equally long desks without subdivi- 
sions. Yet these popular arrangements are generally superior to those 
of some iirst-class colleges, Henry the Fourth's for instance. Besides, 
most of the class-rooms are so badly ventilated, that, when the door 
has been shut for half an hour, the closeness of the atmosphere repels 
the visitor. No place for standing or for movement. In this closely 
packed and confined atmosphere, no wonder that the children be- 
come restless ; and when the signal of recess is given, they leave 
with a rush which has more the charaxter of necessity than of the 
impetuosity of youth. They do not go out, they run away. As a 
compensation, the schools generally possess a well drained play- 
ground for summer, and a covered ouq for winter. Even Paris is 
superior in this respect to New York. 

c) The Methods of teaching are similar to ours ; the favorite 
ones being those by which the greatest number of pui)iis can be 
taught, by which the greatest quantity of information can be impar- 
ted with the least amount of work from the master. But the cur- 
riculum differs in giving less time, or no time to algebra and geome- 
try. Practically the French pupil is quicker in arithmetic, probably- 
because he operates only in decimals. Geography is very elemen 
tary, indeed deficient, is turned into a machine to influence for or 
against a party ; modern history is not taught, nor the current events 



121 

brought to notice ; of their civic status rights and obligations, the 
children do not hear a word. 

d) Another great defect of the Popular School (and of the 
University of France, too) is the form of stuiiulation, brought to 
bear upon the pupils : — not to do good, but to rise above their fel- 
lows. Be the token a crown or cross, or some other symbol of pub- 
lic notoriety, this constant incentive towards supremacy demoralizes 
the few who can pretend to it, and dejects or abjects the larger num- 
ber who feel doomed to inferiority. 

e) Outside of the oficial schools, the "Unions Scolaires" have 
replaced these insignia, which breed pride, jealousy, humiliation, and 
are precursors of inequalities among equals — by the gift to the meri- 
torious of the portraits and biographies of good men, read in the 
evening circle of the farmer or artisan, and then hung in modest 
frames, frequent objects of the aspirations of the family for the fu- 
ture of their children. I am quite proud to have brought over 
some of these biographies, given me in one of these schools, when 
they were persecuted by the ignoble prefect of Lyons in 1873. 

f) In conformity with the Decrees of the Convention, the stu- 
dents of the Normal Schools have to learn the elements of agricul- 
ture and receive practical instruction in horticulture upon grounds 
located conveniently for that purpose. There are more than a 
hundred such schools, one third only for women. There, they re- 
receive their "professional education" on the written pledge to teach 
so many years ; and they receive their "practical training" in the 
common schools, where they are detailed, either for a time as as- 
sistants, to maintain order and learn the traditional forms ; or on an 
emergency, to take the place of absent teachers. 

g) The salaries of the primary teachers are small indeed ; and 
I have seen one, in Montmartre, who acknowledged to me that, for 
years, he could hardly come to the breakfast table, for fear of seeing 
that there would not be enough put on it by his devoted v/ife — cook 
— nurse — washwoman — taiioress, &c., altogether — , to satisfy the 
hunger of their young family, yet there is small compensation for 
this stress ; they have a house and garden in the country or an 
equivalent in money in town; and a pension of retreat after 33 
years of service. But what is without a possible compensation is the 
pressure exercised upon them since 1848 by M. l>e Falloux and his 
accomplices. The teacher above refered to, now director of his 
school, showed me the man charged to report on him. That is an 
EX-BROTHER divested for some misdeed of his robe and name but 
good enough for the work of delation. 

h) The French delegates to the Centennial Exhibition of Phila- 
delphia made an able report on primary education and did full 
justice to the American public school system. The same favorable 
appreciation met the exhibits of our schools in Paris in 1878. 



122 I 

62. The American Popular education is justly admired for 
its rapid adaptation to the wants of information of a whole people ; 
for the unparallelled generosity of the states towards its object ; for 
the zeal and capacity of its one-hundred-thousand teachers ; and 
for the organizmg powers of its managers, who are, without meta- 
phor the generals of the worknig armies of the future. 

But the problem of directing six millions of children toward 
their better destiny by giving them the means of information, dis- 
crimination, and social volition has been fairly tested, and we have 
come to the confines of the possible with the theory and resources 
at command ; viz : a vast system of popular education founded on 
the exercise of the brain, a more than royal endowment intelligently 
and economically spent in grandiose buildings; and yet the Ameri- 
can public school manifests signs of that vacillating immobility which 
precedes either a retrogression or a great stride. This fasti gium did 
not escape the sagacity of the leading teachers. In their anxiety • 
they, at first, added year after year, new matters to those which al- 
ready overtaxed the average brains. 

Now, the most thoughtful of tlien. think of cutting oft the ex- 
crescences which, called b) antiphrase accomplishments, deter the 
pupils from the acquisition and ready use of their mother-tongue. 
But none of these experienced teachers seem to have a clear idea 
of our popular school, which is — neither to extend nor to shorten 
their curriculum, but to displace it, by giving it a less psychological, 
and a more physiological foundation. 

It is with that view in our mind that we will review — not any 
longer the national schools, but — the principal factors of a com- 
mon school education, in the hope of finding in them a 

6t,. Criterium. 

In looking for it we will meet with a difticulty already indicated, 
the scarcity of the specimens sent to the Exhibition, and the diffi- 
culty uf re-establishing between them the missing links. But experi- 
ence has furnished me with other reasons for not trusting without 
personal observation the models which vie with each other in compe- 
titi\^e exhibitions. 

a) The school houses und school rooms I saw in Vienna and 
Philadelphia, for instance, might have been, in reality either small 
or large, at a southern or northern exposure, isolated, in a row 
of cottages, immersed in mud, overtopped by factories, &c., or some 
of their radical defects may have been suppressed, even replaced, on 
paper, by some desirable innovations, &c. As for the buildings, 
some are magnificent, others declare the penury of the population, — 
almost all, vast as they may be, have become too small for the mul- 
titudes to be accommodated. P>w have more than a strip of yard, 
none a play-ground open in summer, covered in winter. Inside its 



123 

partitions, all the teaching is done, as in a kettle heated alternately 
by steam or the ferment of contagia. 

b) These remarks apply with greater force to the school- 
furniture and material of instruction ; which we see bran-new in 
specimens, and found in reality almost everywhere wormy, shaky, 
and unpleasant to come in contact with. The reverse may be true 
in some cases, but not in many. Finer than the models are the 
furniture I have seen in Boston^ and the teaching appliances in 
Albany. 

c) But the weight of this argument bears upon the work of the 
pupils themselves, which forming a maze of selected copy-books, 
charts, drawings, &e., represents the products of the teaching at a 
great distance up from its average : whereas the main object of the 
common school system is the production in, and by the masses, of a 
fair and abundant average of everythmg needed ; just as its policy is 
to raise all youth to a fair average of goodness and co-ordinate utility. 

Viewing the subject in this light, one can easily conceive how 
important is the part of the critic in relation to these exhibitions. 
He must not only store what he sees, but control it by a diligent search 
for the counter-parts or proofs of it, and he must link these discon- 
nected, often contradictory evidences, in order to trace their ten- 
dency toward a future, approvable or reprehensible. Moreover, if 
the exhibited types are not completed or corrected by a severe and 
just criticism, they will be accepted as ideals for the next period, 
during which they will preside to the realization of incalculable mis- 
chief, as has been the case, for instance, with the places erected for 
— I mean against the insane, upon mad or wicked ideals. On the 
contrary, when the new types seen in general exhibitions are pre- 
sented with their legitimate corrections and warnings, their immedi- 
ate realisation at once ascends the higher degree of perfection which 
could otherwise be attained only through the experience of a seiies 
of blunders. In a word, it is not so much the standard of the last 
exhibition which determines the progress of the next, as the thor- 
oughness and forwardness of its criticism, which, digested by the 
people's mind, forms the staple of the future taste and public opinion. 

It is by looking thus alternately backward and forward, alter 
having compared the models of the Welt-Ausstellung, the Puebla 
Street Asylum, the Pape-Carpentier and Lemonnier schools and 
Unions SCOlaires of Paris, the schools of Havre, Bruges, Brus- 
sels, Haarlem, Geneva, Lancaster, (England,) where young opera- 
tives come from the neighboring manufactories to learn and rest ; 
the Gheels' school raised, rather dug in the mud, under the patron- 
age of Ste. Dympna, the Lyons Unions, suppressed by order of 
Notre Dame de Fourviere, the New York primary and grammar 
schools, and the cross-road log-houses, from which quietly issue at 

(13) 



124 



recess the well tempered — because not repressed— young farmers 
who perch on the next fence like birds, talk of far-away lands and 
waters like poets, and of the future like men : it is after seeing these 
and many of the intermediate or out-of-the-way delineations of 
what pass muster for SCHOOLS, that we hazard a few suggestions in 
regard to what we consider their next desirable improvements 



-•— 125 



CHAPTER IL 

The Common School as it should be. 

64. Specifications : (a) The school must be built on the high- 
est ground of the district, separated on all sides from other buildings, 
isolated from the water-closets, with pure water in each room. All 
the openings must be large and directed toward the sun, the air renew- 
ed (mechanically if need be) between the sessions and all night. When 
"a smell" is detected in a school or part of it, tanks improvised with 
rolls of sheet lead are spread on the floor, common salt, peroxide 
of manganese and water are thrown in and stirred, and sulphuric 
acid being added, the air excluded, pounds of chlorine are evolved 
from the dark mass, which decompose in a few hours the deadly gas 
or germs denounced by "the smell." 

Against two other mortal enemies, — the children must not remain 
too closely nor too long shut up together, in order to prevent the 
action of typhus, scarlatina and other contagia ; and if the region is 
infested with malaria the school must be surrounded with febrifuge 
trees, the eucalyptus^ arbor vitae cedar, poplar, &c., thickened in sum- 
mer by rows of orchidees, sun-flowers, &c. Without excepting the 
best localities, the school-ground should be well drained and sunned, 
graded and finally graveled for exercises and sports. An open, 
though covered ground, must be managed for the prosecution of 
some parts of the active training when the weather is inclement. 

(b) The school furnitures must be pleasant to the sight and 
comfortable to the body. Excellent seats, exactly fitting the size 
and shape of the children ; the old word form (if it corresponded 
to its etymology) would better express our idea, since not only all 
the children must have good seats, but those, mainly girls, who have 
a weak spine when growing, ought to have seats, exactly fitting and 
individually supporting each of the spinal processes, and others must 
be allowed to rest their back horizontally as often as the physiological 
censor of the school would prescribe. 



126 

The ordinary seats are made to fit the difterent sizes of chil- 
dren, also adapted to the elevation of the desks which vary as the 
children read, write or draw. Pennsylvania, New York, Massachu- 
seats, have good seats, and London better ones, since she has adopt- 
ed the school furniture of Dr. Liebreich. 

But this question has other aspects : Must the seats, with or 
without desks attached, be continuous, or connected, four, three or 
two together, or single ? We have seen that the continuity of rows 
of seats or benches agrees with the natural demand of infants for 
support right and left or front and back in the sdllc d'asyle- In 
higher grades this close contact gives occasion — as shown in the 
primary class-rooms — for enroachments of one pupil on another, 
and the exercise of petty napoleonism. Isolated seats are the natur- 
al demand of the thoughtful adolescent, in the drawing and mathe- 
matical rooms, and are preferable to punishment by the isolation of 
the troublesome. In the similar view, triple seats may be used to 
keep a restless child bound by the example and position between 
two studious ones. The twin desks may serve the purpose of re- 
warding pupils by seating friends together, or by pairing one 
who needs help in his studies with another capable of being his 
helper. 

(c) The habit of filling up the class-room with furniture, and 
of filling up the interstices with compressed children, has been 
modified, as we have seen in the salle d'asyley and must disap- 
appear from the schools and colleges. Except in a formal amphi- 
theatre, where students remain passively listening only a short time, 
the school-room must offer space enough for the living to move in. 
To that effect, let the seats and desks recede toward (not against) 
the walls and leave the center free, as an invitation to the children 
to come out, when specimens are exhibited to the class, or for the 
exercise of their spontaneous faculties. Let them be arranged m a 
somewhat circular order which, without being formal, would make 
the teacher and pupils to face each other more intellectually than 
do long rows of straight lines ; and — most important — would cause 
the light to fall at proper angles, and with due attractiveness on the 
objects of study ; thus supporting the attention of the mind by the 
comfort of the eye. 

(d) The relations of size, horizontality, and distance of the 
teacher's desk and platform to the size of the auditorium, or class 
proper, demand consideration, because they carry with them econ- 
omy or waste of the voice, gesture, and general means of command 
over the children Those means of influence of the teacher have to 
be husbanded with great economy, otherwise exhausting her ner- 
vous power exhausts their effectiveness. The Swedish platform 
seems the best arranged for this saving; that of New York is to 



197 

bulky, separates the children too much from the teachers, who, being 
generally small intelligent women, have to spend more energy than 
they Can spare in filling with their voice and gesture the gap which 
separates them from their pupils ; and the latter, perceiving this in- 
congruity of proportion, are less attentive, and more difficult to con- 
trol with continuity. 

(e) Other teaching appliances. — In the impossibility of 
naming them all, I would say that, besides being solid in substance 
and make, and as pleasing in form and color as possible, they 
most excel in the qualities which make them useful ; be they com- 
passes, glasses, the metre and litre with heir fractions, the ther- 
mometer, hygrometer, pendulum, globes and spheres, which serve to 
illustrate natural laws. 

There must be blackboards, not only behind the teacher, but in 
every available place at the proper height on the walls ; and when 
you have so many, and use them all, as in the high school of Albany 
N. Y., it seems as if you had not yet enough. This assertion is 
drawn from me by the recollection of the school for the deaf-mutes 
of Aix la Chapelle, where, besides the walls, all the furniture is black 
and constantly used for blackboards ; and why not ? Dr. W. Lin- 
nartz, who has organized this method of teaching, deserves a higher 
place than that which I assigned him in Part II. of this report ; 

but who can tell all that he has seen? This wonderful use of 

every . available piece of wood in the school for writing, drawing, 
calculating, and conveying to, or receiving information from his 
pupils is worth transferring, from Dr. Linnartz's, to the ordinary 
schools. 

All available places next to, and above the formal blackboards, 
are naturally enough filled by charts, illustrations, specimens, and 
instruments of demonstration, which must vary according to the 
grade of the class, and the requirements of the population. 

(f) Though the school-room, when so full, may appear in danger 
of being encumbered — which would be for the children a lesson of 
disorder — there is really little danger of it, since the center of the 
room must remain always free, and because the last minutes of each 
session must be given to the restoration of everything to its hook, 
drawer, shelf, or closet by children honored with this trust ; an 
honor granted them as much as possible in rotation. So much for 
a lesson of order which leaves its imprints through life. 

Otherwise, and m the most general terms, everything about the 
children must be simple, concentric, and concordant. All the lines 
should be converging to unity, representative of their destination ; 
all the colors harmonizing in one tone, as in a Mozart creation, so 
that the mind becomes concentrated by the centripetal direction of 
the surroundings, and the senses -pleased, without exitement, by the 
neutral concert of the accessories. 



128 

(g) As for contrivances of order and police regulations in^ 
schools, a praiseworthy example of one, and a deprecatory illustra- 
tion of the other, as 1 saw them, will suffice. There is in the I'ancas- 
ter public school, already spoken of, a contrivance which I recom- ' 
mend where room is scarce. 

Over each seat hangs a cord rollhig on a pulley with a hook to 
which are suspended caps, baskets, &c.; so that fifteen hundred 
pupils get their things to lunch or to start away in a second, with- 
out possibility of confusion or bickering. We approve of this strict 
order because it is not repressive ; other forms are more objection- 
able than accidental disorder, because they create an irresistible ne- 
cessity for reaction. So it is always fair, and often politic, not to 
represent the rules to children by stringent material barriers, whose 
very prominence provokes infraction ; for if their good sense tells 
them to obey, the rudeness, and often the multiplicity, of such fenc- 
es and defences invite them to break througli the whole system of 
restrictions. As an example in point, take the spirit of the French 
collegiens at large, and look, for instance, at the dormitories of the 
College of Henry IV. If you inquire why the windows are barred 
more strongly than in an insane asylum, and little less than in a 
prison, the answer is that the pupils would go through them to do 
mischief at the certain peril of injury or death. If it seem straiige 
that there is only one light for two rooms and more than a hundred 
beds, and that a single one shining dimly in an inaccessible niche 
at the top of the door, strongly guarded both ways by iron gratings, 
they will say that if the pupils could reach that light they would ex- 
tinguish it, and commence rioting in the dark, and soon the place 
would be set fire to &c. ; and this is true as a possibility, for through 
the smallest aperture m the net- work of compression oft" rushes, not 
the boy, or lad, but a very monkey itself, as created by the impossi- 
bility of showing manly qualities. In proof of this assertion, I have 
seen, during vacation, these same monkeys exhibit toward their 
mothers, sisters, and their social acquaintances the most urbane 
qualities. Nevertheless, outside of the family they will carry into 
their worldly relations this negative and (to some extent) anti-social 
spirit of resistance inoculated into them by material as well as by 
moral compression. This is said as a warning, timely for our own 
colleges, premature for our public schools. 

65. — The school-book. Once the book was the school, and 
the school was the book. Melanchton and Luther, more orthodox 
than Leo X., taught the book, by the book, and for the sake of the 
book. Erasmus commenced the series of day-school-books, which 
inherited the pretentions to infallibility and universality of their 
elder, but their failures are many. 

(a) Though the American school-books have opened a new era 
in printing for children's eyes, and France and Italy have improved 



129 

theirs in our walk, there are no duplicates ot the staple school-books 
printed in the several types, demanded by different optic conditions ; 
nor are there, in the curriculum any provisions for the introduction 
of eye exercises at long range after close or fine reading, &c. 

(b) Teachers may know or not, that the eye has a power of 
accommodation represented by a center, or norm, and by an ex- 
tension which permits it to see, at almost any distance, objects of al- 
most any size ; but they certainly do not know that if the exercise 
of this faculty is commenced too young, or carried too far away 
from its norm, the center of accommodation is displaced, the sight 
altered, and other organic defects are produced. But this is not all. 
As we read in the natural history of the fishes of the Mammoth 
Cave of Kentucky, that the eyes would submit to almost any con- 
ditions imposed uqon them, even to disappearance when they are 
not called for by the presence of light ; as we see our very young 
children poring over such very badly printed books; as myopia 
is so fearfully on the increase that the young need spectacles 
nowadays ; and as myopia has an accumulative power by heredity : — 
may we not reach a point when the children of our fashionably my- 
opic population will be compelled, like the Kentucky fishes, to leave 
their organs of vision in the cave, or to come out with a supple- 
mentary one, somewhat in the shape of a binocle, astride the nose? 
This problem can only be solved in the old-fashioned way of mak- 
ing children read very late, in large, neat print, and very little, from 
very good books, for the reasons above given, to which may be add- 
ed the other, expressed in 1754 by John Locke : "Children" (he 
says, men) "of much reading are greatly learned ; but may be little 
knowing." 

(c) This leads to the question : AVhat are the intellectual quali- 
ties desirable in school-books ? Although these qualities depend on 
the grade of the school, on the mental conditions of the child, and 
on the point in the curriculum at which he has arrived, we can ab- 
stractly define as a good book for education, one which will interest 
and instruct, set the mind thinking, and which does not cause the 
sympathies to degenerate by the fear of phantasms. There are also 
books which have not our approbation because, though thorough, 
they do not set the mind a-thinking, leave nothing for the teacher to 
say, nor for the pupil to infer. 

(d) Histories are often of this class. Is it not painful to hear 
pupils recite about the worship of Isis, without as much as a hint at 
the influence which these rites had on the mind of the people, and 
by religious selection, upon the superior breeding of the ox, to which 
we owe the flesh that supplies the strength of modern societies. Or 
to see Charlemagne represented with a sceptre and crown, but not 
in the act of ordering what plants should be introduced in his bota- 
ical gardens, and studied in the public schools which he opened 



130 

throughout his empire. The history of Alexander is told to 
our children as a bloody escapade, Nothuig is said of his conquests 
in natural history or in geography, or of his establishment of new ar- 
teries of commerce and civilization ; nothing of the scouts sent in 
every direction to supply Aristotle and his disciples with rare ani- 
mals, new fruits, and plants. In these expeditions to the Indus and 
Oxus, branching out to the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and around 
the Cape, his generals became infected with a love of science. Their 
greater rivalry after his death was not on the battle-field, but in Per- 
gamos and Alexandria, where Seleucus and Ptolemeus emulated each 
other in the creation of zoological and botanical gardens, libraries, 
schools, in which they followed the courses of study like common 
students, and with them, and prosecuted experiments in materia 
medica, toxicology, and physiology with the masters, Herophilus, 
Erasistratus, and others. 

The French expedition to Egypt is told in the same vulgai 
spirit. The Directolre had sent — besides an ambitious general — 
a scientific commission whose labors, commenced in the folio reports 
of Denon and his colleagues, were continued by the opening oft; . 
Isthmus of Suez, and will not be closed till the civilizing idea o:" 
Alexander shall have embraced three continents. A history written 
on such a basis would give our children noble stimuli, or intellectual 
ambition, and the comprehension of future events. 

(e) But be the book as good as possible, it seems more fitted to 
the mind of the indolent than to that of the active thinker. The 
examples abound of would-be bad boys becoming great men ; Sir 
Humphrey Davy, in his boyhood, hated books and manifested a 
strong liking for open-air sports, making collections of natural-history 
specimens, thus acquiring the rudiments of a positive education — 
acquaintance with nature's ways. 

(f) Moreover, there are books purposely poisoned. I have seer 
those manufactured in Turin with the help of the idiot, the cretins, 
the halt,and paralytics, in order to pervert their simple-minded kinsmen 
shut up in the gorges of the Alps. Worse ones containing — behind 
the tide of a much esteemed volume a parody of it and calumnies on 
its author. Or not so coarse, but more dangerous, reproductions of 
the beautiful classics of the world, Fenelon, Pascal, De Foe, Moliere, 
mangled by suppressions and sullied by interpolations. It is but 
last year that the Mayor of Tours refused to give these forgeries 
in premium to the city-pupils : an unprecedented courage. 

Since there are so many bad books, and so very few good ones, 
would It not be better to reject them ail ? No ! For verbal teaching 
can and does go the wrong way a good deal farther than the book, 
and without control. Therefore let us keep our school-books and 
steadily improve them, as they form by their bulk of acquired 
knowledge a barrier against national backsliding, even outside o 



— 181 — 

Sicily, Spain, and South America. We must be vigilant, for the con- 
gregation of the Index has legates or proconsuls among us, working 
stealthily at the destruction of the ideas upon which our liberties are 
founded, and who will work as defiantly as they do m Canada, 
circumstances and our own blindness permitting. 

(g) Then what is to be done ? Do what you please, and im- 
prove what you can — about the school buildings, apparatus, dis- 
cipline, books, &c. ; — the means of education now at command, 
— once sufficient for a few thousand pupils, and for the social de- 
mands of the past — are inadequate to the present wants of 150,000 
pupils in the city of New York, 1,500,000 in in the State, 1,000,000 
in the state of Ohio, 14,000,000 in this Republic, and many more 
hourly born with the right of being educated up to the point of do- 
ing their best in this world of co-workers. 

(h) Then the school question is one of revolution ? Yes. 

First from the classic plan, the school must rise to the physio- 
logical plan, which does not exclude air, light, space, movement. 
On the contrary, if these elements of vitality can not be induced to 
enter the 'shut-up* school, let the school meet them out-doors .In or- 
der to locate and to move toward higher capacities so many millions, 
let the school be enlarged by opening to it the pages of the book of 
nature and art, whose illustrations can be conveniently gathered not 
far from the old school, in garden-schools. 



(14) 



132 



CHAPTER III. 
Garden-Schools. 

"The former ideas on pablic schools are exhausted ; 
new social and individual wants demand new solu- 
tions of the problem of education, and these solu- 
tions rest with the physician and physiologist." E. S. 

66. — Growth of this idea, (a) The former ideas on public 
schools are exhausted. — I affirm it with these proofs : since thirty 
years, in order to improve these schools, they have been loaded with 
classical matters ; and in latter years the progress consists in unloading 
them of that surfeit.... Millions of children can not be prepared to work 
on these superfluities which are like feathers to the cap, or the four- 
centimeter finger-nail to the vowed hand of the idler. — New social 
and individual wants demand new solutions of the problem of edu- 
cation, and these solutions rest with the physician and the physiolo- 
gist. It is of no use to point out more of the defects of the old 
school system, let us substitute for criticism an idea of a reconstruct- 
ive character. 

(b) Of this character is the idea of Garden-Schools, that is, 
in its generality, of making the schooling of the masses more active 
and practical by transfering it to the open air, whenever it is possi- 
ble, in obedience to these axioms of Physiological Education : 

1. Do not teach anything in-doors, which can be learned out-doors. 

2. Teach nothing from books which can be learned from nature. 

3. Teach nothing from dead nature which can be observed on the living. 

4. Nature is to be the school-room and the school-book, unless insuper- 
able difficulties prevent. 

Clear as these principles are in the abstract, their application 
has not yet assumed definite forms, owing to the newness of this old 
idea, for most of the modern minds. — 

(c) Ideas live and die like men, and are resuscitated, too, like 
him, if they deserve reviving ; but, be it in their initial or subsequent 
Hie, they must be born in many minds before they can be realized 
in practice. 



183 

This tardy process is unavoidable. Ideas, like seeds will grow 
slowly, the more slowly when their produce will last longer and reach 
farther. Let us say more ; not only do wholesome ideas not attain 
at once their full expansion, but it is hardly desirable that they should. 

For what is an idea which comes out alone in the world ? an 

Utopia. On the contrary, an idea supported by the surrounding 
minds grows steadily, and is soon a good fruit-bearer. Of this latter 
kind will soon be the idea which I will present on the subject of 
Garden-schools. 

To say this, is equivalent to the confession that my idea is not 
tnirie^ but is gradually born from the fecundation of higher minds. 

This idea has traversed ages of light and ages of darkness, be- 
ing sometimes quite lost sight of; therefore it is not indifferent to fol- 
low its historical development before tracing an outline of its possi- 
ble apphcation to the management of our own parks, with due re- 
gard to the difference of aim in different societies. 

(d) The first garden-schools surrounded the temples and hos- 
pitals. When the school became independent, it carried the garden- 
teaching in its protestantism against the demoded (out of fashion) 
gods. Alexander gave his old teacher, Aristotle, one of these gar- 
den-schools, the Nymphseum, full of rare plants and animals. 

Tired of warring, his successors, Eumenes, Attains, Ptolemaeus 
Soter, transferred their rivalry from the batde-field to their garden- 
schools, where the fruits of Asia were acclimatized, and where vege- 
table and animal anatomy and physiology attained, at once, a cer- 
tain excellence. 

Under Theophrastus, Zopyrus, Erasistratus, Nicander, the 
school-gardens of Athens, Pergamos, Alexandria, attracted thous- 
ands of students of nature. Kings felt honored by being their dis- 
ciples, and toxicology became almost a royal corner in science. In 
it Mithridates acquired a fame by his experiments on conium, opium, 
hyosciamus, and their antidotes, and Cleopatra by hers on animal 
poisons, under the tutorship of Cleophantus. 

Later and westward, Theodoric in Lombardy, and Charlemagne 
in his whole empire, took personal pains to organize garden-schools, 
among other barriers tliey meant to oppose to the incoming long 
hibernation of the human mind. But all in vain. The subsequent 
awakening took place in the model gardens planned and grown by 
Alfonzo d'Est and Como di Medici, where was prepared a new birth 
of mankind, forcibly called Renaissance. Next, Henri de Navarra 
laid out the Jardms de Montpellier, which became the hot-bed of an 
illustrious lineage of naturalists and physicians. 

Not content with these reminiscences I went again in search of 
pubhc gardens more akin to our ideal of garden-schools, and came 
back with more definite forms of open-air teaching, by which the school 
may be almost unlimitedly enlarged without erecting new buildings. 



134 

(e) The yardin des Plantes of Paris was the first modern gar- 
den-school. Buffon, Daubenton, Cuvier, de Jussieu, Lamarck (the 
intellectual father of Charles Darwin by the by), worked with their 

brains and hands at its creation and successive reorganizations 

This garden, besides being the resort, dehght and natural book of the 
children of all Europe, became the laboratory of 'de Blainville, 
Cuvier, Lacepede, in comparative anatomy, of Claude Bernard and 
Brown Sequard in physiology, of Becquerel in electricity ; the open- 
air studio of Barrie and Mene, who, too poor, to buy models, would 
bribe theirs with part of their own dry-bread breakfast and the 
certainty of fame in bronze. So many naturalists, physiologists, artists, 
poets, philosophers have studied or taught there, that it might as 
well now be called "Z<f Jar din des grands hommes^\ Though 
somewhat antiquated as a garden, and delapidated as a museum 
which hides instead of showing its untold treasures of Natural His- 
tory, it is yet the Natural school, the most frequented and studied in 
Europe ; it remains a paradise of flowers for women and children 
and of shades for old folks : happy those who can yet sit on its 
rough old benches, under its arched elms and Hndens, or under the 
giant cedar brought there from Lebanon in the hat of Daubenton. 

(f) The popular gardens of Milan, Florence, the Tuileries, the 
Allees of the Luxembourg, the Buttes Chaumount, and the Bois de 
Boulogne, the Central, Prospect, Fairmount and Lincoln parks, and 
many others in London, Southampton, Edinburgh, etc., afford more 
comfort to the busy than instruction to the young folks ; yet I am 
ready to admit that many images are unconsciously stored in these 
rambles, which turn up ideas when wanted. 

The botanical gardens of Padua, Pisa, Leyden, Breslau, Mont- 
pellier, are parts of the vast foundation of the Renaissance which 
revived science and letters, but stood too high above the wants of 
the masses to serve us as models. 

The discovery I made nearest to our ideal garden school was 
the park of Montsoury, then (1877) in preparation for the children 
of all the schools and colleges of Paris. Its plans had been matured 
by the scientific leaders of the Municipal Council of Paris, Littre, 
Charton, Bourneville. This park consists of beautiful grounds 
slightly inclined toward the sun, and ornamented with an arabesque 
palace of the Khedive, now an observatory and museum. When 
this book of natural history will be all written in green and blooming 
patches, it will accomodate by squads many thousand students and 
children every day. So will, in a less formal manner, the gardens 
of Acclimatization renovated from those which were part of the en- 
gines of the Macedonian Crusade for the civilisation and unification 
of the old world. The teachers who planned these garden-schools 
teach yet, twenty-three-hundred years after their death : so mani- 
festly immortal are those who deserve "la vie future". 



135 

These were the nearest approach to what I wanted ; though I 
must confess nobody but one who had seen a garden-school in his 
mind eyes could have said : that is an approach to it. 

(g) However, these public resorts contain other elements of 
education interspersed with the customary attractions. 

These European Gardens are mythological, fashionable, botan- 
ical, zoological, conservatories of exotics, or acclimatization grounds, 
often of a mixed character ; almost all disposed for the varied 
amusements in which children, and many grown people as well, find 
ample scope for mirth, activity, versatility, and the cultivation of 
their imagmg and imaginmg powers. 

Some of these public grounds, stately in lines and subdued in 
tones, unfold in their rectangular walks, like the Pincio of Rome, all 
the known busts of antiquity — copies, to be sure, but correct enough 
to let the passer-by read on them the marble-proofs of the text of 
Tacitus, Plutarch, Appian : that is already garden-school education. 
Let me acknowledge here that our parks already contain monu- 
ments of this kind, some good, some .... No matter. Consider- 
ing that perfection is as rare in a bronze or marble population as 
in tnose temporarily cast in flesh and bone, — that is one fine speci- 
men in a thousand bad or indifferent ones ; we must find our statues 
as good as the average anywhere except one : namely that which 
represents Walter Scott as he was when excess of labor had already 
deformed his cranium by enlargement of the ventricles. Such a 
pathological specimen of softening of the brain, instead of the poet- 
ical figure of the author of the Waver ly Novels can obliterate for- 
ever in the young the sense of the significance of intellectual types : 
take it away, that/<?jr/ truth lie, take it away ! 

(h) Other parks — not unlike the Olympus, or the Eiysean 
Fields — are peopled with gods and heroes whose sight does an in- 
commmensurable good to the young sight-seeker, by admitting him 
to physiognomic intimacy with the Past. These gods and heroes 
were hypotheses like our forces : attraction, electricity &c. They 
had lasted during and for the social evolution over which they pre- 
sided ; but now, nothing remains of their truly divine power to move 
the world onward with an idea, but the shadow of that idea fixed 
on their features by some knowing, though unknown artist. So far 
as to comprehend Jupiter, we must contemplate his representation 
attributed to Phidias or Aesculapius — finding his statue the perfect 
likeness of his grand-father, though in diminutive proportions, and 
in every trait unlike his fathers, the artist, — we do not stoop to in- 
quire if the god of medicine was in the flesh the son of Apollo and 
the grand-son of Jupiter, but we see, in the form of his hereditary 
likeness, that the ancients knew more of atavism than the recent ob- 
servations of Broca and his friends have suggested. For my part I 
could not have realized the antique revolt of women against the Fate 



.. — 136 

before the Basin of Niobe in the garden of Versailles, but I did at 
once when I glanced at the Niobe of the Museum of Berlin. 

Thus the garden and the museum, far above the book in vital- 
ities, correct or supplement each other's impressions, making each' 
generation in its turn live in the past, and in the future as it is indi- 
cated in the aspirations of artists. To rhe appreciation of our psycho- 
physiological capacity for receiving impressions, like heliotypes, in 
passing, is due the creation of these resorts of the multitude where the 
education of, and by the senses is incessant and forcible. 

(i) To the English belongs the honor of having perfected those 
immense glass-palace-gardens, out-door or glass-roofed-tields equally 
pleasant and instructive. Their Kensington and Sydenham (though 
stained here and there with a touch of the horrible taste of the pre- 
ceding generation), had on the whole, on the present English aesthet- 
ics, an influence which had created the name of Victorian 
period. 

Indeed, the development and rarifications of these art-and- 
nature institutions explain the progress m the taste of the English, from 
Milais and the architect of the city-hall of Manchester, to the ad- 
mirable unnamed thousand designers on wood and metals, potters or 
modelers in clay, &c. The virtue of this blending together of nature 
and art in gardens which are schools, and in schools replete with the 
beauties of the garden, has been so happily expressed by the young 
prince Leopold, of England, — speaking as a pupil of Ruskin, 
but in terms whose warmth is his own — that 1 will quote them : 
"The highest wisdom and the highest pleasure need not be costly or 
exclusive, but may be almost as cheap and as free as air ; and the 
greatness of a nation must be measured — not by her wealth or ap- 
parent power, but — by the degree in which all her people have 
learned together from the world of books, of art, of nature a pure 
and ennobling joy." 

(j) If thus spoke a prince who has nothing to do, what must 
think on the same theme those whose children will have to work for 
a living. Barring the few who will — with or without education — 
show genius and be crowned with gold or thorns, as fate has it in 
store, the milhons who must do toil (in competition, not with the help 
of the machines) can hardly expect a bare living from their produc- 
tions, unless they are animated by the individual's taste. But, to 
train the taste, all the written books of the world cannot teach as 
much, as the observation of the distribution of the resistances in a 
nut-shell, or the different attitudes of a branch of white lily from sun- 
rise to sun-down. 

(k) That is why we claim our parks and public grounds — not 
only for themselves and the health they insure — but as the places 
to set up the models of what a republican education must be. As 
I said in my own right and duty : 'T want our parks preserved as 



137 

play-grounds, and improved as garden-schools, for my grand-sons 
Edward and John."* 

(1) When T said so, I was asked if the idea of garden-schools 
had precedents, and I have shown its growth in history ; if there 
were any gardens used for teaching, and we found many ; if there 
were already in Europe garden-schools connected with any system 
of popular education, and we found only one such in process 
of formation; if grounds of public amusement were adapted 
also to instruction, and this duality of object is the salient trait 
of the most famed gardens. Among others, Kew has seventy -five 
acres devoted to study, and so disposed that none of the pleasure- 
seekers are gloomed by their sight, nor the students disturbed by the 
idlers . I have shown that the improvements in European gar- 
dens are all that way — that is, tending to make these public resorts 
more educational ; we have seen them losing their mythological, 
princely, or technical features, and assuming more and more the char- 
acter of popular institutions of taste, of learning, and of health-culture. 

As a result of this survey, if I am asked which of the European 
gardens of instruction can serve us a model, I answer : none. 
Aping Europe in education, as well as in other matters of organic 
importance, is not desirable. The crops of women and men wanted 
here are neither the low and needy, nor the artificial and unproduc- 
tive classes whose juxtaposition makes the picturesque side and the 
dangerous foundation of old societies. Besides it would be idle to 
argue how much more necessary than in Europe is a natural system 
of traniing the masses in our Republic, where the problem of edu- 
cation, contains the solution of the social problem ; and where all 
must receive, not the highest possible educadon, but the most physio- 
logical. And it is directly by its physiological basis and bearing 
that this projected enlargement of our school and school system 
appeals to the good common sense of the country. 

The philosophical plan of the garden-school is this : What is 
for select children a real-school on a tray, and for infants a kinder- 
garten on a quadrated table, we want for all the children — a com- 
prehensive garden-school system, taking place in true gardens, com- 
plemented by museums, and complementing the public school. Its 
specificatons are these : 

68 In cities, like New York, besides the facilities for enjoy- 
ment which the young and the old must find m the parks, adequate 
to their curiosity and activity — there must be large tracts of land 
and water arranged as so many pages illustrative of nature. 

(a) The New York Central Park — whose constitution and by- 
laws consecrate it "equally to the pleasure ol the public and to the 
instruction of youth" — should contain the garden-school proper, 



*) See "Our Parks", by E. Seguin, 1878 — Brentano, New York, 



188 

which is not a botanical garden replete with a strictly systematic 
flora. On the contrary, it must contain, besides specimens of a simple 
classification (e. g. de Candolle's) — vegetables grouped according to 
their origin : a large place being assigned, in contrasting exposures, 
to the trees and plants of the north and south of this continent ; 
others would be grouped according to our usage as domestic, nu- 
tritious, medicinal, toxic, &c., others according to their affinities for 
parasites, or the contrary ; others for their sympathetic expressions 
of vitality ; others as models of lines and colors to be transferred 
to the works of art or industry. 

The zoological collections need variety, instead of a surfeit 
of monsters, or ferocious animals boarded at the public expense for 
the accommodation of cratty showmen. Industrious animals are no 
more deprived of poetical attraction than the bees of St. Etienne 
and the ground-worms of Anzm. 

Children w^ould be immensely interested to find in full operaton 
the appliances for artificial hatching, breeding, and fattening poultry, 
raising the silk-worm, etc. There are happiness and wealth m the 
direction of the tastes of the people to such productive and peace- 
ful occupations. 

There is no more reason for the waters of a park to look 
dead than for its trees to look meaningless. They can be made live- 
ly with the appliances of hydraulics and with specimens of their own 
powers ; they may represent miniatures of the great American water- 
falls, Niagara. Montmorency, etc.; they must be alive with shells, 
fishes, wter- weeds, and blossoms; and show plainly the wonders 
and remunerations of fish culture. 

Geology claims for its study the rocks and caves of the park ; 
not only on account of their interesting formation, but for the 
facility they offer of representing, by insertion in sections, the min- 
eral wealth and topography of the country. 

Many other teachings of realities have their places surely 
marked in our future garden-school, as drawing and carving from 
plants and animals — all open-air schools, which need no buildings 
and will breed no contagions. We insist only on the adoption of the 
principle, confident that its consequences, health and healthy knowl- 
edge, will follow. 

(b) The small squares should be planted on a concerted plan ; 
so that each would present in a series of seasons and years the plants 
and fiowers which leave in the imagination the same imprints of 
nature's loveliest ornaments. 

(c) The grounds of intermediate size should be dressed accord- 
ing to the wantH of the wards in which they lie ; being also influ- 
enced by a general plan corresponding with the destinies of the city. 
For, unless we live and die fike cattle, we must feel the current 
of life in which we live, in order to move in it understandingly and 



139 

happily ; and these ideas must be hatched in the young brains in 
order to be realized by the motive minds. 

But to be more explicit in my illustrations : 

(d) Union Square and Madison Square are well located and 
shaped to do honor to the civil and military heroes of the Republic, 
among larger jets ot water and pyramids of fresh floweas at the foot 
of each tree, even what remains of the city-hall-park would be pro- 
tected by the statues of our few worthy city magistrates. 

(e) Washington Square is wanted for an avarium, rosarium, and 
other collections of flowers and vines, in order to enlarge or elevate 
several of our best art-industries. It is situated in the center of a 
population which enfranchises us from the enormous tribute once 
paid to foreign skill for artificial flowers, leaves, trimmings, bird- 
mounting, etc. A little encouragement by fine models, and a little 
education of the eye, would soon enable this truly respectable part 
of our population to compete with the Italian and the French in 
foreign markets, and to levy industrial tributes where we were once 
tnbutaries. As an illustration, three sisters of one of my friends 
studied the perfect roses fronting the Luxembourg with such suc- 
cess that Batton paid for their roses six dollars each ; and there are 
in that row four well-known rose-trees which must have repaid to 
the city of Paris one million francs in unequalled art-imitations. 

I regret to say that money is found to open new drives, but 
none to plant in our parks a rose worth copying, nor a pink, a hya- 
cinth, a cluster of meadow-saffron peeping with naturalness through 
the young grass to invite the pencil of artists to grace, or the tongue 
of children to picturesqueness. But my heart is too full of the 
emptiness of ideas which rules these public matters. Humiliation 
silences me, and other separated public- grounds call for a rescue and 
a nobler use. 

(h) Tompkins Square has ceased to be a muddy Sahara, to be 
a false Madison Square, without special provisions for children ; 
whereas it ought to have been made a play-ground and garden- 
school. There are around it 20,000 children, whose homes are 
narrow and bad, whose only play-thing is the dirt they splash at 
the passing cars for an amusement, having no other. The park be- 
ing planted to not be touched, it is for such customers on insuperable 
provocation to destroy everything in it ; but if part of it were arranged 
for games under the guardianship of a few gymnasts instead of po- 
licemen, the rest of the grounds, consecrated to instruction will be 
respected, nay, loved as the Parisians love the Luxembourg, &c. — 
joys and lessons of their youth. During the development of that 
tender feeling for nature — which is reciprocal — children will con- 
ceive a new order of relations with their fellows, with the flowers for 
their perfume, and colors, with the vegetables which nourish those 

(15) 



140 

who grow them. Hence will be brought to their sensorium the 
truly religious idea of the duties of man towards the flora which 
breathe life-gases into our nostrils, of the interchange of vital ele- 
ments between plants and animals,— so beautiful an operation — 
whose perpetuation is the sine qua non of the perpetuity of man on 
earth, and of the earth as a living planet. 

(g) More important yet — that is for the course of sympathe- 
tic and aesthetic education — is the consecration in visible form 
of places identified with the past and future of the population. 

Of this kind is the New York Battery where for several cen- 
turies, all ages and conditions met to greet the entrance of ships ex- 
pected or unknown, bringing riches and news. This sight fired the 
hearts of the young to become great merchants, brave sea-captains, 
daring ship-builderrs, and to extend the mj.ritime city around its 
harbor. 

I will speak of it as if miserable misers, gamblers and politicians, 
had not stolen part of it, obstructed the rest, and turned out the 
youth to take their inspirations in the enfers of Wall street, where 
the proc-eeds of American synergy are divided like a booty. 

The Battery is the frontispiece of New York, grand in its ma- 
rine and distant decorations of lands like scarfs, and islands like 
jewels. Let it be the grand portal-entrance of the metropolis of a 
continent. Do not allow its land to betray its water, but let both 
harmonize their lines and colors in a perspective which must vie 
with the souvenirs of Corinth and the fading beauties of Venice. 

In this ornamentation, respecting the touches of nature, but ab- 
sorbing them into our art, let the Battery be open — as it was for the 
Indian — up to the Bowling-Green, Elysean in its walks, like the Park of 
Monceaux, and limited, right and left, by monuments inspired by the 
site's ideal : museums of marine, of maritime implements, of sea pro- 
ductions and wonders, schools of drawing, naval architecture, &c. 

In front, let it immerse its marble steps and horizontal decors as 
a live mythology, look at the bordering lands and islands as distant 
accessories and extensions. Governor's Island, the only possible 
situation for temporary exhibitions, her little sister, the light-bearer 
of French Liberty, and Staten Island as the main sporting and study- 
ing ground of the schools, and the festive resort of an overworked 
population. 

Of this idea (whose development does not belong here) the 
starting point is the Battery. Let this inspiring ground ot the fa- 
thers be decorated in a style worthy the place it occupies in our 
annals, impressible to the stranger, and promoting in the youth a 
desire to rank among the men who have made this sea-port one of 
the sights of the world. 

69. What would apply to New York could be adapted to the 
wants and circumstances of other cities: 



141 

(a) In Philadelphia the grounds of Fairmont have been left by 
the Centennial Exhibition as if prepared for transformation into gar- 
den-schools: even the trees and shrubs being labelled with their 
names. The conservatory of exotics is almost perfect, so the mu- 
seum of art which need only to be put in closer connection with the 
school-system. The remaining buildings can be appropiated to this 
system as sheds and covered play-grounds, for gymnastics of ensem- 
ble^ and as repositories of the collections of the real-school, to be 
studied on the spot, or borrowed by the shut-up schools of the city 
for extemporaneous demonstration, drawing, modeling, &c. 

(b) The Park of Cincinnati offers an invigorating air to the 
young population stifling in brick schools between the Ohio and the 
turbid canal of the Miami derisively called Rhine. It is too small — 
like our Central Park — to be encumbered witii the appliances and 
technicalities which can find their place in adjacent grounds ; but 
must reserve the Park itself for the teaching of art by nature sem- 
pervirens and sempervivens, 

Chicago presents more room. Her Southern Park offers a 
square field of several miles to the imagination of the farm-and-gar- 
den teacher and hygienist ; and her Lincoln Park, a belt of green 
and flowers in which can be set specimens of the minerals hidden 
on the opposite shore in a magnetic circle. 

(c) Smaller cities have more room to devote to teaching, there- 
fore more choice for a site — which of itself may become a lesson. 
Take, for instance, Atlanta, burned by the same sun against which 
Augusta has protected herself by four and six rows of foliage. 

Instead of keeping hatefully barren the grounds shaved to op- 
pose the march of Sherman, why not plant them as school-gardens 
and shades ; pushing this new vegetation — which everywhere covers 
so much of spilled blood — to that peaceful spring, whose silent water 
cures the sick, and whose Egeria, surrounded by a happier genera- 
tion, would cure old moral sores, too. Why not make at once 
of this field of resentment a garden-school for the youth of a city, 
where education is rakch honored, and in a state where the most 
highly bred women too refuge in teaching, against the miseries 
brought on by satanic pride. 

70. But it is for the village children that the natural lessons 
and training of the garden-school are most needed. Strange, since 
nature is at the door, and often forces an entrance in the school 
through the window in the shape of a clematis or the scent of the 
honey-suckle; strange, yes; but too true. — Nowhere else the inabil- 
ity of the present curriculum to develop manhood in man is so mani- 
fest as in the village school, nor so great the necessity of imparting 
powers sooner than knowledge to youth, and of giving preference 
to that knowledge which can be directly converted into power. 



142 

(a) The powers of acting upon nature — instead of being con- 
stantly overpowered by, it — being the pre-requisite of happiness in 
country-life, country-education must train in the child these con- 
quering powers : "man loves his conquest," but to conquer nature he 
must be trained in physiological intimacy with its local modalities. 
To that end the country-kindergarten must borrow its forms from 
the geometry of vegetation; the garden-school of large cities be re- 
placed by excursions ; the fantastic school-garden of the town and 
colleges assume a practical turn, without losing its ideas, and come 
nearer the farming-school, without the inducement of SLCiusd J>aymg 
as in Mettray or Hempton. No, the out-door country-school aims 
only at developing the strength, the manual skill, and the taste neces- 
sary to make the young feel that they possess the means of master- 
ing nature better than did their parents. 

(b) However, in the country other elements of happiness than 
power over nature are needed to attach man to the place of his 
birth or choice. Art and historical objects must bind him by their 
attractive forms and reminiscenses, speaking to the imagination as 
flowers do speak to the odor and to the sight, in other words, 
"man", in the field as elsewhere, "does not live only upon bread but 
upon every thing which nourishes his mind." But it is not possible 
for the village to have its artistic, historical, floral collections and 
festivities strongly attaching the young ones to their penates ? 

This idea will be qualified as a pastoral impossibility by the 
teachers among us, but may be proved to be practicable by the fact 
that it exists already /^rj-/w, needing only a little foresight for its gen- 
eralization. 

(c) A garden-school may be organized in the smallest village 
by an understanding among the families in regard to the kind of or- 
namental trees and bushes they select, and to the flowers each will 
cultivate every year, so that with little expense collections of plants 
many times more varied than those of our Central Park could be 
seen. Indeed, they are already found without method in many 
villages of New England : in Ansonia, for instance, where almost 
every front-yard is adorned with the same flowers which we raised 
ourselves in our college-gardens fifty years ago. 

(d) The same inducement obtains in regards to a village- 
museum. How pleasant it would be to devote a place to it near 
the public record and library ; each generation bringing to it, its 
best women and men, and finest children ; a sort of inexpensive, 
though an accurate gallery, which would soon demonstrate the tradi- 
tion, deviation, or improvement of the local type, warning of what 
ought to be done to elevate the population in beauty and capacity 
— adding to it, as they may happen, local events, discoveries, inven- 
tions, rarities of nature or of ait. 

Is that too an Utopia ? Then see, how simple but right-minded 



143 

farmers have realized it in Deerfield : Under its most venerable elms, 
in a house of the i8th century, lie the relics of the Massachusetts- 
Indians, of the revolutionary war, of the stupendous house-keeping 
of the past, of the antique superstitions (overlooking the present 
ones, of course), of mineralogy, geology, fossils, botany, home in- 
dustries, and many other treasures, which give children a clearer 
idea of the life of' their fathers than any formal description. 

The paramount object of country education is to develop in the 
young a love and appreciation of home life and of their surround- 
ings in harmony with their prospects. Youth has a horror of the 
vacuum ; and if their emotional capacity is not educated in and for 
their horizon, they are carried away from a home empty of ideals, 
into the vortex of competition where the weak soon perish. For 
this individual evil and social danger, a vague culture and non-ph>s- 
ioiogical education are responsible. 

What we make children love and desire is more important than 
what we make them learn ; at any rate make them learn what they 
can reach, and make them love what they learn. Miss Leanna Ha- 
gore of Abingdon, 111., succeeds in it, and others, as we shall see. 

(e) I have tried to present with clearness this subject of out- 
door education, but had to make it purely didactic ; though its his- 
tory would be of magnetic interest, but its historians know no date 
nor method. However, I hope I have made out its main practical 
divisions, i) The kindergarten to amuse, occupy and instruct young 
children. 2) The garden-schools to study nature and to exercise. 
3) The town school-garden to create a taste for, 4) The country- 
school-garden to prepare the hand and mind for agriculture. These 
interested us, and the others were omitted, partly for want of room 
viz. : The natural history excursions, the summer schools of experi- 
mentation, and the farm-school, or model farm. 

Add to this plan of garden -school its crowning features, free, ac- 
cessible to all, the national park of Niagara, the Yosemite reservation 
and canons and volcanoes favorable to the study of geology, hy- 
drology, mineralogy, and mining-engineering, whicli it is not in my 
province to describe, but which must be preserved sacred for the 
pleasure and instruction of the American youth— such are the re- 
presentations of the school's protestantism against the tyranny of the 
book, but no more of this, directly. 

(f) Indirectly we have seen that the garden-school and other 
forms of out-door teaching are necessary for the health, the perfect 
development, the buoyancy of youth, and for the teaching of several 
matters which may be called inherent to the soil, as natural history, 
geology, botany. But there are other matters which, without being 
inseparable from the soil, have their foundation on it, as geogra- 
phy, and its derivative, the international metric system. I had re- 
solved to keep clear of the classical subjects of instruction but can 



144 

not avoid those which have to be restored to the physiological order. 

71. Geography. — It is a trite remark that nothing is so soon 
forgotten as geography. This is due to the want of interest in what 
is taught as such, and also to the vague location of the objects studied. 

(d) The interest to be created depends on circumstances, and 
the matter can not be discussed here, but I found an example of it 
worth quoting at the Welt Ausstellmig^ which was lost to reward 
among the richly bound reports of famed schools. 

This was a private correspondence between the pupils of the 
primary school of Peronne, in the north of France, and those of the 
school of Dieu-le-fils, in the south. The young correspondents de- 
scribe to each other the natural characters, the climate, the situation 
the soil, the products, manufactures, usages, festivities, and varieties 
of their respective towns, townships, and provinces (departments). 
These letters received and answered with manifest pleasure, taught 
things impossible to find in print, and to forget. They created, I 
was told, and believe, among the young writers^ feelings of interest 
which promised to ripen into friendship. They make them love the 
distant places seen in these descriptions as the home of the friends, 
and feel that identity of soil and population which is fully expressed 
only by the word Patria. This small contribution of two provincial 
schools escaped the attention of the commission of rewards and re- 
ceived likely none but our own tribute of admiration : In our 
judgment, it is a mode of making geography lovable ; a matter 
which can be extended from one nation to another with humane re- 
sults ; which does not exclude the book, nor the chart, but animates 
both, and binds them with the results of personal observation in a 
net- work of good feelings. 

(b) Greater than the want of interest in the study of geography 
is its absence of physical basis on earth, and of physiological basis 
in the consciousness of the student — who does not feel the rela- 
tions of his self with the objects of his study ? — in a study whose 
importance precisely resides in the accurate relation of these positions. 

In geography, the relative position is much more important than 
the distances and dimensions whose figures take so much of lime 
and room. The relative position studied on charts may properly be 
said en Pair, whilst in reality the geographical position begins — 
that is takes its starting point — in the center ot consciousness of the 
student relatively to orientation. If the child has not first settled 
his orientation, all his notions of geography will dance a saraband 
in his skull. If I were to speak to beavers and prairie-dogs, I should 
not have to insist upon the usefulness of orientation ; but man be- 
ing a progressive animal, has the capacity of forgetting as well as 
of learning ; so that he now asks : why the pyramids ? 

(J) I do not want such a huge thing in every garden school ; 
but a gnomon as small and accurate as possible, around which the 



_ 145 

sideral and terrestrial notions will be given, and where the children 
will figure on the sand with their shovels any parts of the planisphere 
duly loca.ted. 

In Central China, it is said, every rustic brings the stranger into 
his garden, and in the garden to his well, showing it as the center 
of the world. And this it is for him. So for children who want to 
know the sphere they live on ; its center is at home, at school, in the 
garden-school, whence, guided by orientation, their minds will fly, 
with the accuracy of the bee or pigeon from the confines of this 
world toward the others. That is why gnomons and compasses 
should be more common in the schools than clocks. 

There is another reason to supply the schools, and most par- 
ticularly all the garden-schools with gnomons ; for the gnomon — 
as such — is the starting point of location of geographical facts in 
the bram ; and it can and must be made — as a meter — the stand- 
ard and standing measure of the mensuration of all things measurable : 
Orientation, the mother of mensuration ; the gnomon, father to the 
meter. 

72. Mensuration. When there were only a few mathemati- 
cians, geometricians, physicists and physicians, merchants and manu- 
facturors, it was of little consequence for the masses what kind of 
weights, measures, and moneys were used to cheat them. I have 
seen, when young, in a market place, in Nivernais, wheat and oats 
change hands according to seven different kinds of bushels, so called ; 
and m New York, people have given me twelve cents and kept thir- 
teen as the two equitable halves of an honest English shilling. 
There are possibly no higher motives to change a system (in this case 
a chaos) than this; but there are many more to teach the new one. 
Did I call the metric system new? Pshaw! It was new in 1800 when 
Von Humboldt made use of it in his book on electricity : but it was 
no longer new, only obligatory, when my father began to prescribe 
by it in 1840. We can not delay its adoption in this country; "it 
will bring us into harmony with more than a score of nations, save 
millions annually in computations, and a year of the school-life of 
every child" ; lasdy it is learned without fatigue, and by sensorial 
processes which enhance immensely the powers of observation and 
execution : This is what touches us the most — 

(a) Since the metric system must prevail, let it be taught practi- 
cally, at once, to all, and by the physiological method : the only one 
which can develop in the mind of the masses that accuracy of 
measurement and of proportions which gives a superior value to the 
products of science, art, and labor at large. 

(b) It has been too much the habit to teach it by the classic, or 
verbal method ; or by means of illustrations ; or at best to use the 
typical weights and measures only to help the metric theory, or of 
metric illustrations. All over Europe, and in the best schools of 



146 

this country, the metric system is taught by this — let us say eclectic 
method — , which works as follows : At schools, the typical weights 
and measures are crowded, some even folded in a glass-case ; and 
when the turn comes lor the metric system to be explained, next to 
the United States monetary decimal system, they are taken out of 
the box, shown to the students, and even handled by them, but re- 
turned ijistafiter to be locked up in the glass-case ; just as the blood 
of St Janviar is returned to its shrine after it has liguefied. 

To make a people learn a new system of mensuration, and 
moreover to make them forget or disregard an old inveterate one, 
this lax practice of teaching, which I politely called "a method", 
will never do. 

(c) The metric system, as a "system", demands but a few hours 
of oral instruction : it is so simple and so compact ; but as a 
"meter" or standard of all things to be measured at every turn of 
the mind, of the eye, and of the hand, by a whole nation, it needs 
the sensorial training which physiological education can alone 
plan and carry out. In other terms, we must make it enter, go out, 
re-enter through the senses, till it comes in and out by the uncon- 
scious and sure process of automatism. Then we possess the 
metric system, because we have been taken. possession of by it. 

(d) The means and methods of impressing the mind with the 
metric prototypes through the senses, far from being exhausted, are 
hardly indicated, though they are susceptible of such perfection as 
to become applicable to the advancement of arts and sciences, and 
in particular to the introduction of mathematical precision in the 
practice of the liberal professions. 

I have, so to speak, set up the metro - gnomon which children 
can not escape, seeing it. At its sight, they could instantly locate 
and measure all what they have to learn concerning astronomy, geo- 
graphy, history, regional botany, the start of inventions, discoveries, 
&c., which, taught otherwise, lay piled in their brain, soon to be for- 
gotten, for want of physiological localisation and mensuration, in a 
word, the metro-gnomon is the etalon on and around which, all the 
mental acquisitions of the child arrange themselves, in the same order 
as in the sensorium. 

On this center of perceptions would be found the name, date 
of origin, and population of the place, its altitude, latitude and longi- 
tude, distance of other points of interest in kilometers as on the 
Boston and Providence R. R., and on all the routes of Europe ; and 
m meters that of the school-house and public institutions. There 
would be prominent the solar time, thermometry, borometry, hygro- 
metry of the open atmosphere, in comparison with the same pheno- 
mena in the school-room. 

(e) As we approach this, the yard and its accessories, such as 
fountains, water-basins, drinking-cups must be metrically measured, 



— _ 147 

and so inscribed. A new school building must be metric from 
basement to gables, and the old ones repaired or enlarged in metric 
proportions, etc. The school furniture and apparatus all metric, 
the metre itself painted on the walls of every school room, stand- 
ing prototype of all the dimensions and proportions to be studied 
or referred to. 

Let us do likewise, and set up here the metre before going 
further. 



(16) 



148 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Metric System. 

73. The Metric System (a) is the great legacy of the Eigh- 
teenth to the Nineteenth Century. It is the 7netre par excellence, since 
it refers our most vulgar or infinitesimal measures to those of the dis- 
tant worlds through the typical measure of our planet. It is also 
the system of recko?ii?ig par excel lence,smcQ it treats all the quantities, 
either concrete, abstract, or hypothetic, separately or together, by 
the same systematic decimal operation. Therefore a teacher of 
great authority was enabled to say : "Le systeme metrique fran9ais, 
chaque fois que je I'expose a mes eleves, que je leur raconte I'histoire 
de sa decouverte, je me sens prise d'une profonde emotion." (Car- 
oline Progler's correspondence.) 

(b) On another hand, how is it that one of her co-laborers 
could difter so much in his feehngs on the same subject as to be 
obliged to say : "Every time I have to write or to speak of the metric 
system, I feel my courage descend below the diaphragm, and 
would like to run away." Why that contrast ?. Because the con- 
fidence of the noble woman comes from her speaking to children — 
whose fontanel is not, or is imperfectly closed ; and the diffidence 
of the ill-starred man from addressing an audience whose ossification 
leaves nothing to be desired, nor any chance of development for 
new convolutions, — an anatomical contrast bearing inversely on the 
physiological issues of education. I put emphasis on this fact, be- 
cause it marks the point at which new mental processes may yet 
be registered on the gray matter, but after which any confirmed au- 
tomatism of the mind can hardly ever be got rid of. 

(c) Happily, only two nations have kept themselves excom- 
municated from the metric league — unhappily ours is one of the 
two ; — and that for no other reason but the negative one of not 
having made the study and practice of the metric system obligatory 
in their schools. Had it been otherwise, the judgment of John C. 



149 

Dalton would hold good in England as it does in France, in this 
Republic as in the Geraian Empire : "No one who has once em- 
ployed the metric system practically, could" ever use any other." 
Therefore, it is pernicious to put off its teaching and practice in 
our schools. 

But, besides, in all careers of human activity, the ignorance of 
tliis all but international quantitative language leaves us — as a nation 
— in ignorance of the scientific doings of other nations, and exposed 
to dulcamara complmients like the one Professor Charcot, of Paris, 
administered at Cork to the British Medical Association : *'It is not 
your national idiom which debars me from becoming familiar with 
your great authors, it is your Gothic weights and measures." 

(d) As for the mode of teaching "the International Metric 
System," half an hour suffices to explain its theory; and its mechanism 
demands only a few lessons, instead of a year wasted in overcoming 
the duodecimal incongruities ; but its habit will depend on making 
everything metric about the child, as I have suggested to do for the 
school-furniture, etc. Thus surrounded, he will have insensibly in- 
culcated unto himself the prototype of mathematical proportions 
a,nd of natural beauties. 

When a nascent avocation commands the early use of instru- 
ments which give more reach and precision to the operations of the 
senses, the child masters them easier by metric than by other calcu- 
lations; besides the rapidity and clearness of the results. As for 
those who aim at the development of the higher senses to perceive 
and to execute, let them not ignore that a meter of some sort — and 
we have only one worth naming — must be the constant ideal in the 
life-long training of a Prometheus. 

(e) On these different scores, the metric system must not be 
dismissed as are futile acquirements, at the very time it might become 
the leader of calculus and tlie regulator of human creations. On 
the contrary, let it occupy a large place in education : firstly, as "the 
system of reckoning which nobody will relinquish who once used it" 
(Dalton) ; and "the ignorance of which brings with it its own scorn" 
(Charcot). Secondly, and forever, as the ideal measure upon which 
everything dreamed of by the mind, or to be made by the hand, 
ought to find its pre-ordained proportions. For, conversely, it is 
because the present type-measure is not yet universally accepted and 
the old ones forgotten, that we make barbarous /rtr^//V/^^j, instead of 
original work. 

(f ) To hasten the end of this confusion, the teachers ought 
to devote more time to the metric matters. These matters require 
to be taught to the senses and to the mind. First to the perceptive 
senses, by the multiplicity and unavoidableness of the metric type 
present everywhere; secondly, to the executive senses, by soliciting 
from the pupil frequent realizations of the metric proportions during 



150 -— 

his exercises and manual or visual operations ; thirdly, by calling the 
mind to form frequent judgments as to the dimensions and weights 
of objects near, distant, or out of reach and sight ; that is, present 
only to the mind. 

This form of trauiing is not the intuitive method — so much 
talked of now ; — it is not the deductive, either ; — it is the physiological 
method, which calls into exercise alternately, then concurrently, the 
centripetal and centrifugal nerves, and controls their action at their 
static and dynamic point of concurrence, execution. 

(g) Now it is plain why I could not go ahead with the 
teaching of dimensions without having settled their criterion on a 
solid basis, the meter. The same remark obtains for the study of the 
propo?-tions, which are relative dimensions ; for the direction of the 
lines, which is relative to the proportions of the general plan ; and 
for the generation and intersection of the lines, which solder the de- 
tails into unity. By this light I can say: In order to give precision 
to these notions, it is desirable to teach them not all at once, but in 
their natural order. For instance, not to let children m^kt Jigures 
composed of several marks, sticks, or straws, until they have become 
sharp observers and accurate executors of simple metric dimensions; 
having constantly in view — must I repeat it ? — the prototype of all 
dimensions, proportions, etc. I cannot enter into more details with- 
out making a treatise, and this is only a survey. — Besides, these mat- 
ters will be viewed again from another stand-point. 

(h) Viewing it now historically, to see the meter absorbing in 
the unity of its system all the yards and ells and cubits, acres, 
bushels, and pounds, with their fanciful divisions and mad discrepan- 
cies, helps us to understand that above all the levers man possesses 
(hydraulics, steam, electricity, etc.) the greatest is his inner power of 
creating a law out of the chaos of facts. We now comprehend what 
we only wondered at when, younger, we were told that Pythagoras 
had sacrificed a hundred oxen to the gods who had inspired him 
with the discovery of the solution of the problem of the hypolhenuse. 

But how much more worthy of sacrifices is the invention of a 
system which will soon make all the computations figured and talked 
of on earth equally comprehensible to its inhabitants. 

Here we leave the metre, but it does not leave us. Mathe- 
matics have been pervaded by it ; so that the little we propose to 
say of their teaching will come in this place as a corollary. 

(i) Numeration, being essentially objective, was at first learned 
with ?iummi, calculi, castanece, Jiuces, now with cherries, berries, 
small eatables, or playthings, and with the numeral frames, from that 
of the Chinese to that of the Yankee. It should have as many 
characters as it has objects, but for the conventionality of grouping 
the figures in theories of unities, of multiples, and of fi-actions. 

The Roman numeration, yet in use, has seven characters and a 



151 - — 

decimal theory. The metro-decimal system has an equal number of 
characters and of units in its theory^ and applies readily to any- 
thing ponderable, measurable, and numerable. The duodecimal 
system numerates by dozens and calculates by tens, a cacometry 
which could be expunged — but is not — by the addition of two new 
characters. This complement would satisfy the eye — which has so 
much to do in numeration, as well as the mind — which has so much 
to do with calculation. 

( j) To calculate is not, however, a high operation of the mind. 
We know it, because some idiots have surpassed Academicians at 
calculating. One can say, the savant calculates in view of solving 
important problems, and the idiot for no purpose, or for a low one. 
Granted, — but the difference in their aim does not make any difference 
in the calculating processes of the two ; and the idiot has dem- 
onstrated by lijs own success, and to the dismay of the savant, that 
counting is not thinking. 

But if it is not this, what is it ? It is a complex of psycho- 
physiological operation, whose series, extremely important to an- 
alyze here, runs thus : Numeration is apprehended by the senses, 
calculation is comprehended by the mind, while counting is entrusted 
to automatism. The first operation is one of sensory attention, the 
second of mental tension whose continuity would be unbearable, 
the third a machine work. By the first, the accepted theory of 
nunjeration, be it tertial, septimal, decimal, or duodecimal, etc., is 
founded on the capacity of perceiving so many 'units as ofte unit; 
by the second, the combinations of units included m the adopted 
theofy, as 3 and 3, 4 and 2, 5 and i, to form the theory of six, are 
rationally ascertained to be all equivalents of six : and these known 
equivalents are casts, like stereotypes, to be used in the third opera- 
tion as blocks, — as later, the casts of the multiplication table. 

Let these elements of the calculus be distinctly taught, as they 
distinctly emerge from each other, though from different sources : a 
cogent numeration at the base, and correct dies of the pnmary cal 
culi, put at the disposition of automatism, which will distribute them 
without fatigue, the mind surveying the results. 

These are the three distinct operations of counting. They have 
to be taught as distinctly as they are practiced; otherwise the calcu- 
lator, skillful or not, will either become an automaton, or — if he tries 
to bring intelligence into his operations — break the machine by mix- 
ing the v.'heels with the springs, and become insane, as is proved by 
a heavy percentage of calculators, from Blaise Pascal down to many 
teachers and tyros of polytechnic and technological schools. 

(k) Natural geometry (taking the word in its limited sense of 
study of form in space) is the object of a desire which generally pre- 
cedes the artificial curiosity for the meaning of letters. • 

From their earliest days, children are sensible to plastic har- 



152 

monies, avoid rough surfaces, hurting angles, as by instinct, by exper- 
ience ; and soon differentiate the two primary gifts of Froebel ; not 
so soon the third, which is distinctively a gift of his helpers. They 
recognize an horizontal — as a straw floating on the surface of water, 
from a perpendicular — as the leaden thread which intersects the 
straw. On indications as this, given ordinarily by the children 
themselves, may be commenced their course of experimental geom- 
etry. To build up a body of such knowledge, they have unto them- 
selves the human genius, in waitmg for peripheric incitation and 
material. 

Take away these two motors — will the beaver build dikes when 
he is deprived of true lumber and boarded in a zoological palace ? 
He will, by spells, gnaw some billets, Hke a stupid rodent. — Will not 
the bee cease to make honey when the mildness of the climate, and 
the continuous abundance of provisions do not incite her to build 
her stores and nurseries, marvels of natural geometry ? It will spatter 
an amorphous, filthy treacle. 

That is precisely what happens to our children going to school 
loaded with armfuls of books. Instead of which, put within their 
reach, with a hint and an insensible direction, levels, levers, pulleys, 
squares, compasses of various sorts, concrete numbers, weights, and 
measures, timers, particularly metronomes, to co-ordinate their 
voices and movements, and hour- glasses and alarums to awaken two 
senses at once to the importance of time's precision ; and children 
will be as busy as bees and as tenacious as beavers at the task of 
taking possession, by their industry, of their share of the world. 

Those instruments are the primaries of the primary school, as 
recommended by Condorcet, Talleyrand, Laplace, Lavoisier, Four- 
croy, Bertholet, Monge, in their Reports for the best plans of a 
national school. These plans were set aside by narrow reaction- 
aries, they have to be set up again in the school where the people 
will learn to conquer or to keep his independence through skilled la- 
bor : an attainment possible only through the knowledge of forms in 
space, which gives the power of creating intelligent forms in the 
brute world; ^^mefis agitat /?wles.'' 

It is on these natural bases that Lagout and Dalseme have 
founded their series of practical studies of forms in space, from 
which the kindergarten has borrowed so much, and the primary 
school so little : the only exceptions which came of late to my per- 
sonal knowledge being from the Unions Scolaires of France, from 
the Liguc de V Enseignement in Belgium, and from the Method of 
Drawing of Ottin, of Paris. 

However, the natural geometry considered as these notable 
teachers have done, derives its precepts from the experiment, in- 
stead of giving the precept as an a priori before experiment. The 
physiological training displaces farther the lesson, by carrying the 



— 158 • — ' 

Operation into the child ; a method of education easy to compare 
with the two former, {a) By the classical teaching, the principle 
is enunciated; imposed like a dogma (see Legendre) and the sequels 
or demonstrations have to follow ; even facts are mutilated to fit that 
Procrustean bed. [b) By the object-teaching, facts are the field of 
study, and the doctrine crops out of their mass. — But sometimes 
that mass is made up by a prejudiced or perfidious hand ; then ? , . . . 
(<:) By \\iQ physiological VL\it\\\o^, the training proceeds from the in- 
side. The child is neither ordered to believe or to act in accord- 
ance to an a priori; nor let loose in the domams of objective exper- 
imentation ; but he, himself, is, and his functions are separating the 
constant subjective of the training ; all preconceptions and all object- 
ives notwithstanding. 

Thus, when we spoke of teaching the metre, for instance, we 
did not mean teaching the metric system for itself, but as the instru- 
ment /^r^;c^<?//^;/i:^? with which Ave mean to elevate the nervous func- 
tions of two senses to the highest order of their attainable capacities. 
In this view, we held the type measure before the mind to judge and 
conceive, for the hand to perceive and to execute according to this 
type, everything useful and beautiful. 

We wanted from the material metre its ideal : we found it a 
graduated stick, and showed how to make it a living metre, — that is 
as good an illustration as any, of the power of physiological training. 



154 



CHAPTER V. 

Education of the Senses. 

74. In fact, we were already engaged in this subject. For, 
what is it to appreciate dimensions, proportions, forms, weights, 
vokmies, distances, densities, &c., but the most direct gymnastics 
of the senses, though indirectly undertaken, when following, like a 
stream, the current of educational matters which, from the physio- 
logical point of view, are all subordinate to the personal training ? 
Then why not continue to employ this apparently occasional form 
of presenting the education of the senses, instead of the didactic, 
since it leaves more freedom for versatility in a work naturally heavy, 
as wtII as for noting, sometimes explaining, en passant the sensory 
origin of the progress, immobility, and retrogression in education. 

The education of the senses is as useful as that of the mind, 
and must, if anything, precede it. For what an educated mind can 
do without the help of educated senses, is seen uselessly shelved in 
our libraries ; what the senses and the hand, unaided by the culti- 
vated mind, are doing, fills up our stores of coarse products eagerly 
s®ught after; and what both, the educated senses and mind can 
accomplish in concert is proudly exposed to view in the Olympic 
rivalries of modern nations. 

By this latter process, we will spread parsim and without ten- 
sion illustrations of (a) the kind of superiority of the productions 
of the epochs during which the senses were developed, even to ex- 
cess ; (b) of the harmony of the productions of the epochs during which 
the mind and the senses received an almost parallel education ; (c) 
of the impossibility of using intellectual resources, when they are 
not supported by accurate sensory preceptions ; (d) of the vagaries 
of the mind deprived of the criteria which the senses furnish ; (e) 
of the rapid degradation of the creations of taste when they are 
reproduced or intrepreted by unskilled hands and senses ; (f) of the 
progress accomplished by recent improvements in the modes of me- 
diate or immediate sensory perceptions ; (g) of the progress expected 
in art and science from a better training of the senses, and from the 



155 

incessant addition to our instruments and methods to give more pre- 
cision and reach to the operations of the senses. 

75. Education of the Medical Senses. The profession of the 
writer enables him to show from it, how much the efficiency of our 
intellectual education depends upon an equally thorough sensorial 
training. — I premise, that the capacity most needed by a physician, 
does not come to hnn so much from the stores of general knowledge 
and of professional traditions, as from the ready capability of his 
systematically trained organs of perception (the senses), and of exe- 
cution (the hand). 

a. The first sense called into requisition in medical practice is 
that of smell ; before the door of a patient is opened, this sense can 
often tell what is the matter with him. It must be educated by a 
special curriculum, without the help of the other senses ; not only to 
the point of being able to diagnose almost every disease, at least any 
group of diseases, by their specific odors; but to that of reconnoiter- 
ing when patients and their surrounders are in dangerous milieux, 
affected with concealed passions, etc. 

b. The sense of taste or gustation formely assisted the phy- 
sician at the bed-side more than it does now in three almost lost 
arts : one to taste the identity or quality of the drugs administered 
as medicines ; — but since the practitioner has abdicated the dispens- 
ing of drugs, his tasting capacity, rarely put in requisition, is blunted. 
The second lost art is that of testing the ??iateria morbi. Chemistry 
has almost entirely superseded gustation of this sort by analytic 
tests ; however, we may be called where chemicals can not be ob- 
tained ; and moreover we must not forget that the sense of taste has 
discovered several diseases, diabetes for instance, when chemistry 
was ,yet in the limbo of alchymy. Lastly this sense is called also to 
control the quality of the foods and drinks. But even in that appar- 
ently humble sphere of doing good, it must have been submitted to 
patient and varied experiments, instead of which it is abused in 
words and indulged in practice; is called all sorts of names in pub- 
lic, and privately spoiled by excess of alcohol or of sugar ; one pro- 
ducing delirium, the other diabetes, both ruining the delicate ap- 
preciation of taste, whose name is justly extended in all civilized 
languages to the perception of refinement of all sorts. 

c. The eye of a physician must read countenances more easily 
than books ; but this reading has its alphabet, which he must learn 
before pretending to understand human expressions in health or sick- 
ness, passion or peril. The infinite modalities of life are expressed 
by lines, contours, colors, and shades. To catch these modalities 
and to seize their relations or their antitheses, is the spelling of the 
young physician, preparatory to deciphering and naming diseases 
at the bed-side. 

(17) 



156 

Is not this book — the human countenance — worth reading by 
all, above black marks on white sheets ?. . .What made some would- 
be great men, and some of the incontestably wonderful women, was 
no other genius than this now rare, but educable faculty which, if it 
were once cultivated in the school and practiced at large in the 
world, would increase by heredity to the powers of reading through 
and through the past impressions and of divining the contingent 
emotions. It was this atavic cumulation that Hippocrates inherited 
from the Asclepiades to a degree which v/as considered superhuman 
by good judges. It would be for our children like the gift of a new 
faculty — -so much it has been atrophied by the exclusive study of the 
past. Its privation is equivalent to mental blindness. The medical 
student who has not received this primary education of the senses, 
here advocated, is too often incapa.ble of reading what Our Master 
calls the sights ; he can study but can not observe ; he knows so 
much from others, and learns so little from himself, that his case is 
one of scholarly impotence. 

d. The hearing and the touch have culminated, for the phy- 
sician, m the arts of auscultation. However there is no course in 
the ordinary schools to prepare the children to hear, and to listen to 
delicate vibrations ; nor sensory examinations preliminary to admis- 
sion in medical colleges ; so that medical students know often too late, 
that they do not possess the sense of hearing, even to an ordinary 
degree, and will never be able to use it as a clinical instrument. 

e. The hand ot the physician is not limited to the touch, nor 
the touch to the art of percussion and pulse-feeling. As the general 
agent of touch and execution in the practice of physic, it plays a part 
more important than that of the other senses together. Indeed, 
Galen himself — who appears to us in the distance as if he had been 
endowed with Hippocratic sight and foresight, but who was certainly 
gifted with Apollonian tactile delicacy — made such loving study 
of the hand that his description reads Hke a poem ; it is almost an 
apotheosis. In this mighty effort, he does not hesitate to give to the 
tactus eruditus the precedence, if not the priority, over the mens 
eruditus. With him we revindicate the priority of the training of the 
hand in medical schools, over the study of our art in books ; and 
more, we say : From first to last, let us educate the hand ; and once 
educated, let us keep it up to the highest point of sensitive and execu- 
tive capacity. 

/. On revising these pages, I am forcibly reminded of having 
seen Virchow lecture on "Medical Education" at the last meeting 
of the International Medical Congress of Amsterdam. To one not 
familiar with the German, withal lost in the crowd of competent ad- 
mirers, the great Berliner seemed to say : "The science of medicine 
is in a state of transition; great changes are going on for which 
medical students must be prepared. The questions of the present 



157 

moment are not those of yesterday. The interest is displaced ; lately 
concentrated on nosology and doses, it is now intensified on the best 
means of observing accurately and of recording mathematically. 
In other words, there is to day less distance between the men 
of small and the men of big doses, so called, than between the prac- 
titioners who register in figures the signs which they perceive with 
their natural or artificial senses ; and those who render no account, 
either to themselves or to society of the living capital intrusted to 
their infallibility. 

"In consequence of this displacement of pubHc opinion, the 
clinic taxes the senses for more and more perspicuity, and when this 
perspicuity failr, to discover the sig7is, new instruments are invented 
to extend or supplement the diagnostic power of the senses. Here 
is the medical desideratum : possibly less erudition, surely a more 
skilled use of the senses and of the instruments and methods of posi- 
tive observation. 

"There have been generations of students studying in the dark, 
imposed upon, and taught to impose in their turn. Not so with 
you, our juniors. No road has been so clearly traced as yours. 
The science of medicine aims at a rank among the exact sciences, 
you have it in your power to elevate it to that height, and yourselves 
with her, by doing strictly exact work in practice and by recording 
your cases mathematically. To that effect, sharpen your instruments 
of precision, viz : train your senses to the highest point of sensibility ; 
drill your fingers and eyes to the use of the instruments which 
extend the operations of the senses far above their natural limits ; 
record graphically or numerically the data furnished by this double 
set of instruments of observation ; and learn how to read — that is 
to interpret the signs, and the series of signs of the great functions : 
signs whose mathematical fluctuations represent the ebb and flow 
of life through the contrary currents of the disease and of the 
medication. 

"Some contend that a preliminary qualification to become a 
medical student must be a knowledge of Latin, Greek, Algebra, and 
what not ? . . . But I say, let him know all that — and more — or less ; 
but make sure that his senses — if possible, trained from infancy — are 
capable of furnishing to the mind the data of a medical verdict : a 
medical mind can be solidly seated only among sound medical senses. 

"Therefore, not only the primary school is at fault, but the 
medical schools are culpable for spending in recitations and lectures 
the time which ought to be given to the training of the senses. "I 
saw these ideas Hght up the face of Virchow when he was speaking 
of the future of our profession ; he must have said something to 
that effect, only more pointed and harmonious." 

76. Education of the Industrial Senses. When interro- 
gated, the representatives of industry will bring forth the same testi- 



158 

mony as the men of science : The school does not improve the 
working capacity of the scholar, which is the foundation of the in- 
dependence of men, of the security, moral education and thrift 
of society. 

These working capacities have for instruments the industrial 
senses properly educated. But I can not omit here the fulcrum on 
which these instruments rest in their operations, I mean, the sense 
of duty toward self and others. Unfortunately this sense has been 
tortured steadily, from the first historical record, by a pre-historic 
legend which did more harm than all the blood shed of heroes. 
1 mean the representation of Adam and Eve as being born gentle- 
man and gendevvoman of leisure, who tried to learn better, and 
were sent to work as a punishment. Whereas, if there is some truth 
in the legend, it must be reversed and read, as did read it a man 
whose prophecies have been realized by the score ; "The paradise 
is not behind, it is before us." A reward for the work, and a result 
of the working capacities of the millions, — their stimulus, not their 
doom. 

A fact culminates in our mdustrial and industrious society, it is 
the substitution of the machine to the hand. This substitution does 
not portend that soon man will not need to work ; on the contrary, 
it means that he will have to work more than ever, because machines, 
making more and cheaper objects of comsumption, render these 
more generally desired ; and in order to obtain them he must pro- 
duce, if not more, better than the machine. But he can do better 
than the automatism of metals, only by ceasing to be himself an 
automaton, and by working with superiorly educated senses aided 
by a superiorly educated mind. Such are the signs of the times, 
and the necessities of the school. 

The working capacities to be trained from infancy, and more 
technically at school are : i — The senses to perceive. 2 — The mind 
to receive, store and evoke ideals. 3 — The hand to execute a con- 
cept (an idea well conceived) 4 — The handling and maneuvering 
of the instruments which extend and enlarge the operations of the 
hand and of the senses. 5 — The co-ordination, and alternate sub- 
ordination of the senses in the acts of perception and execution. 
This perfection of the working capacities is demanded in almost any 
kind of w©rk; and industry, being now so muldform, demands more 
versatility of sensory aptitudes, and more physical knowledge than 
are found in what is called the educated classes. 

Indeed this new economic arrangement has made the condition 
of the working classes inferior or superior to what it was. Inferior, 
for those who are attached to the machinery as so many wheels, with- 
out the intelligence of the machine, worse than the serfs of the 
glebe, at any rate, with less hope and vital air. Superior, for those 
who have learned to comprehend and rule the machine, or who can 



159 

enhance its products by the plus-value of their hand dexterity and 
sense culture; an alternative which shows the cruelty of turning 
adrift as educated, children who have received a would-be intellect- 
ual education, to the exclusion of the practical training of the senses, 
which could keep them up, above the pressure of the instruments 
of modern slavery. 

The first desideratum, in my opinion, is to prepare the senses 
for the creation of mdustrial types — the second for the co?iservation 
of the purity of these types, [a] If the former, the creation of types 
does not appear to be ui great demand for each industry, there are 
so many kinds of industries, that their totality calls hourly for a lar- 
ger supply of origmal inventions, or new combinations of lines, 
colors, mechanisms, etc. without forgetting the demand for new 
types created by the rapid alteration of the latest during their un- 
skilled and automatic reproduction. 

d. This alteration would not be so rapid if there were in the 
school anything like a training for the conservation of the ideals, ma- 
terialized in their original type. There is nothing like it in primary 
instruction ; only approximations by Professor Suys, of the Ecole 
Modele of Brussels, Rieber and Ottin of the public schools of Paris. 

c. The problem is neuro-muscular. In the education of the 
industrial senses an important part is assigned to the muscular sense, 
which sense, composed partly of tactile feeling, and pardy of con- 
traction, leaves on matter the imprint of the idea by which it was 
prompted. 

This sense was unconciously educated at play when children 
were allowed that luxury in schools. To it are due much of our 
happiness, and almost all the material realizations of our ideas. — 
In its superior training we must look for the elevation of the work- 
ing man above the machine ; but first let us understand it. 

d. It is an aggressive sense which, properly trained, knows in- 
tuitively how much of power, or synergy, it will need to make mat- 
ter speak. The exercise of this complex funcdon during skilled 
labor, requires a number and a variety of combinations of the tactile 
feeling and of the fiber-contractions truly appalling for the mind 
merely to think of, and which would certainly craze it, if it had to 
command them all after reflection. Happily, like the operations 
of coundng, the operations of the muscular sense, once conceived 
and tried with due mental attention, may be entrusted to automat- 
ism, a function as unerring as it is unimprovable, when it has once 
made up its casts, as we have seen m counting. Therefore it is 
of the utmost importance that the two elements of this power, the 
muscular sense, be trained separately and together. 

e. At the bottom of the success in all the arts, and of all artisans 
is the precision of touch — be it the touch of the sense of touch, of 
sight, hearing, smell or taste (which are but modified tacts or con- 



160 

tacts). These are guides to our natural or mechanical instruments 
of execution. Since the muscles of the life of relation obey the 
nervous impulses, results of impressions either act lal or "previously 
recorded, the richer the store of sensory impressions, the more true 
and effective will be the work done by the skillful play of the mus- 
cular contractions. 

In this view, the cultivation of precise sensations — in regard to 
the properties of the most varied substances which modern industry 
can submit to its arts, crafts, and manual operations — is certainly 
the most useful course which a child could follow at school, and 
can never get too soon. 

To give him that experimental knowledge, courses must be in- 
stituted of perceptions gradually more delicate, either bi- or mono- 
sensorial. In these courses, a child would soon be known as quali- 
fied or incompetent for certain kinds of work. But the chief benefit 
of this training would be to give an almost infallible guide to the 
muscular force, when, in the process of acting on matter, in order to 
endow it, with the meanmg of that tact^ which, touching it, has 
called it into life and rendered it fit for use. 

f. But in that touch there is more than a sensitive tact^ there is 
also a force prompted by a muscular lever. 

Gymnasdcs and sports are instituted to develop this power ; 
many schools have them ; all should have a gymnasium, the best 
being the simplest, in the open air, weather permitting; but strange 
enough, hardly any one suspects its raison d'etre. To grow immense 
packs of muscles ? — No ; but to develop parts of the body weakened 
or ill-nourished, to harmonize several organic and all the motor and 
vocal functions, to put the essential apparatus, as lungs, heart, skin, 
in working order, and to discipline every muscle of the life of rela- 
tion to obey the dictates of the intellect from the brain, of the will 
from the sympathetic and spinal cord. — This should supercede the 
gymnastics, boating, racing &c., instituted to make muscle for the 
sake of muscle, producing clowns — amusing enough ; — colossi — 
achronological pachiderms, extinct knighthoods, which can not 
show on their blazon one noble though comical Don Quixote, for 
a hundred greasy Sancho Panzas. The gymnastics we favor and 
demand, is that which calls into useful activity the muscles con- 
trolled by the sentient and motor nerves, every lever which can be 
commanded by a refined intellect. This training to be done from 
the periphery to the center, from the center to the periphery, be it 
imitative or willed ; to develop the primary elements of intentional 
personal activity and of objective agressivity, giving a meaning to 
every muscular contraction, and adding to the spirit of blood itself, 
by the rise of its temperature during the friction of the fibers. 

g. This co-gymnastics of the senses and of the muscles settles a 
vexed question. Rousseau saw well that every man must work with 



161 

his body as well as with his brain — for the sake of duty and of 
health. Accordingly, Madame de Genlis made her royal pupils learn 
each one a trade ; likewise every educator looks for the means of 
inserting manual labor in intellectual education, at the same time 
that the princes of labor allow their young laborers a time to learn 
from books, expecting in return more intelligence at the loom or m 
the workshop. Thus the extremes meet on that common ground 
of improvement. But then they diverge mstantly m this wise : 
That some say children must work when studymg, and others that 
they must study when working — positions of which the philosophy 
cannot be impugned, as long as it rests on social necessities — both 
parties, however, forgetting equally the previous question of training 
the senses before educating the mmd. 

h. I have been at some pains to see with my own eyes, not only 
what comparative international exhibitions show at their best, but 
the every day realities of the schools directly issued from Rousseau's 
theory at Lamartiniere's, Gerard's, and those created by secondary 
thoughts of the same order at Lancaster, Chalons, Paris, Brussels, 
Havre, Dublin, and more in this country. In every one-— and all, 
I have seen a great deal of good done in the superstructure, but this 
failing at the base : no physiological foundations, which ought to be 
partly laid by the training of the uses, previous to the education 
of the mind, and especially by that of the muscular sense, the lever of 
the executive creations of the will. To express the same criticism 
in a psychological form, I would say that in those schools they em- 
ploy the "capacities" of the child to do some specified work ; tak- 
ing for granted that capacities are increased by usage, according to 
the proverb: c^est en/orgeant qu'on dev lent forger oji; but that they 
do not train his physiological "capabilities" to their point of adapt- 
ability to any of the tasks which may befall him in our versatile so- 
ciety, from painting a passing humming-bird tocrushing or smelting 
auriferous quartz. 

i. This absence of primary education of the working capacities 
is much more disastrous in our laborious society than in any of the 
previous ones. It retards the progress of all the arts, leaves at the 
helm men of heterogeneous education, tricksters, unfit for the leader- 
ship of busy nations, and throws hourly to waste immense quantities 
of ill- worked material. A word on this last score can not be avoided 
v/hen giving a last look at the training of the industrial senses. 

Almost all the handicrafts furnish examples of the losses in- 
flicted by the lack of training of the senses and hands. The name 
hafids, given to the masses set to work with native automatism only, 
and without a preparatory education of their executive senses, is 
perfectly characteristic of the severance of their hands from the 
higher faculties — a mutilation for which they abundantly revenge 
themselves by the infliction of moral and financial evils. Let us 



16S — 

illustrate these evils by the most apparent of their consequences, 
the rapid alteration of types by the masses who are engaged in their 
reproductions without having received a preliminary training of their 
organs of execution. 

New types, called fashions, are constantly created in architec- 
ture, painting, dressing, furniture making, etc. Let us refer to that 
which employs the greatest number of hands, and mostly women. 
The fashion in all the articles of dress changes so often that it is 
demoralizing for many, and ruinous for more. Women have been 
reproached for this, as we think, with great injustice ; at least it can 
not be denied that, in the time when fashions were executed by true 
artists, they were transmitted almost without alteration from mother 
to daughter at least, and that even now, the true Parisian of taste 
and education changes her style of dress less and more rarely than 
any other woman, because those who reproduce fashions there re- 
main truer to the type. The cause of the revolutions which we see 
in dress resides in this : When a new type comes out, with forms 
and colors, combinations of both, and a fitness to the human form 
truly lovely, everybody wants it. When it has been executed — let 
us say for the correctness of the idea, translated — a few hundred 
times, it has lost what the French call 'V<f je ne sais quoi,''^ which 
causes one to dream of it. The third month everybody has it ; 
the fourth, everybody wants to get rid of it, and to have the new 
one, not yet well started ; and why ? Because the translation from 
copy to copy by automatic and non-educated hands has become 
too unpleasing to contemplate. So the work of millions of people 
and the fruitless expenditure of millions of money — without reckon- 
ing the greater cost of an almost incurable demoralization — result 
from a schooling which leaves out of the mental curriculum the 
senses, the feeders of the mind, and the hand, the realizer of its 
flitting shadows. 

By these examples, taken from common human affairs, we see 
that the hand alone can give precision and durability to the simplest 
ideas. The same truth becomes more evident in the higher ways 
of intellect. Who made the great discoveries of our age ? Fulton, 
Faraday, Daguerre, Morse, Wells — men whose hands had from 
infancy executed the ideas of the mind. When the mind is active 
and the hand inapt, ideas run to waste, by a mental process we 
may call ideorrhea — not a rare disease. But when the hand is able to 
give a body to the ideal, which has been flitting behind the skull, like 
a ghost along the Styx, the invention stands in substance before a 
benefitted and admiring world. Therefore let us educate the hand. 

77. Education of the Hand. The hand — of which so 
much is expected as the executive oflicer of the will and of the 
mind, by force or delicacy — receives only the chance training 
of automatism. 

* i 



163 

a. It is unfortunately the fact that it has for years and ages 
struggled against matter to make it express or accomplish ideas, re- 
ceiving all the while the least possible help from the mind. But the 
great progress of hand-work at the Welt-Ausstellung, at the 
exhibition of Philadelphia 1876 and Paris 1878, over the preceding 
exhibits at Paris and London, and the drawing of the French, 
German, Italian, and Swiss schools, show that the hand is more and 
more educated intellectually, if not yet physiologically. The 
object-lessons have largely influenced the advent of the realistic 
taste now prevalent in art and industry ; but when the physiological 
education — of which these lessons are only an inverted and partial 
application — shall prevail in the schools — then the hand will rule, 
and the question will arise, the hand of which nation will be queen ? 
Why should it not be that of America ? 

b. There is something in chiromancy. As the aspect of the 
head bespeaks mental power, so the hand indicates its creative 
capacity. Like the head, the hand is amenable to greater perfection 
of shape ; hence to untold dexterities. If we judge of the American 
hand by the promise of its forms, — long without puny tapering, its 
palm large enough for a strong clasp, its phalanges well defined, 
without articular nodosities, the nails well made, supporting a pulp 
equally sensitive, firm, and elastic, — such a hand, well trained, must 
become a match for the most skillful. Here, coarse hands are 
of foreign origin, made clumsy by hereditary overwork, and can, by 
culture, be brought to an average of dignity and usefulness, at the 
latest in the second generation. But the correction, by education, 
of the anomalies of form, of contractiHty and of tactility — of the 
hand, forms a special department of education. 

c. In its general appHcation, the education of the hand aims at 
exercising the muscular and nervous apparatus separately and con- 
jomtly ; making the hand obey an outside will or example, or the 
internal will or thought ; executing either of these dictates in the- 
shortest time, in rational order, with the greatest correctness, force, 
delicacy, and, finally, art; habituating the hand to convert all labors 
of repetition from intellectual to automatic, without losing the ap- 
pearance of the former ; working alternately under the dictates 
of the will and under the impulses of automatism, without ever 
mixing the former, in which the hand is obedient t- ) the brain, with 
the latter, whose repetitive impulse is from a near ganglion when the 
mind takes rest. These exercises must be made singly, in small 
groups, by large assemblages, on command, on imitation of a person 
or ot objects. Education trains the sight as well as the hand to 
wonderful quickness and precision, and prepares these organs for 
higher labors. 

d. Both hands must be equally trained, the right and the left 

(18) 



_. 164 ->— 

separately, alternately, and together, and must be made to execute 
movements of totality, or of their small phalanges singly or together, 
by the most rapid and correct simultaneity of the will, the eye, 
and the hand. 

Moreover, when some mequality is discovered, not only in the 
ability of the two hands, but in the growth and action of both sides 
at large, two orders of correctives must be ready in the school for 
application, one to the child directly and personally, the other re- 
sulting from some pre -arrangements in the school. By the first, as 
soon as a difference of size or symmetry is manifested, the dexter 
habits of the pupil must be altered into sinister. ' Eating, cutting, 
brushing, and the menial services which the hand performs as a 
domestic of the body, must be intrusted to the left, even drawing, 
writing, and a few automatic games and exercises, like spading, 
sawmg, at the same time that the lacing, buckling, buttoning of the 
garments must be altered to be vvorked by that hand. By the 
second and more general device, it would be well to have the school- 
arrangements, as the doors and windows, altered and disposed to 
be moved by left-handling, so that not only the children deformed, 
by prior right-handling would improve, but so that new cases of this 
deformity would become as rare as they now are frequent. So this 
physiological training of the hand and of the left side is urged on the 
grounds of necessity in favor not of a few children, but of all, on 
the plea of the dualistic structure of the human body, as developed 
in Part i. 

In educating the hand as the executive officer of the will, one 
soon finds that it is also the surest carrier of the impressions pro- 
duced by contact; that is, of the general sense of touch, and 
of the special sense of tact — carriers of so many comforts and so 
much happiness. These, like the other senses, are susceptible 
of education, and were educated by the ancients, as it appears from 
the expressions, ^^ tact us eruditus^^ ^^eruditus oculus,'^ ^^eruditu?n 
palatum.''^ 

78. — Education of the Eye. a. The education of the 
hand is but the introduction to that of the other senses, as we have 
seen its natural exercise take the precedence in the new born. It 
served us to illustrate the preliminary wants of an industrial educa- 
tion, and now we will take from the eye our illustrations of the phys- 
iological development of the sense of "the beautiful" — not because 
the other senses are not concerned in it, but tor the sake of shortness 
and pointedness. 

b. Volumes have been written on "the beautiful" since Longin, 
himself a great compiler, and none have pointed out its physiological 
origin. As the sense of the "tangible beautiful" has been in man 
since he exercised an ebb and flow pressure on the finest curves in 
the world, so the sense of the "visible beautiful" entered the mind, 



165 

circumscribed by the form of the eye, or led by its sympathetic 
movements. 

c. It is a cultivated, but natural sense, nevertheless ; since it 
rests upon our organism and its functions as follows : Nothing, ever 
so fine in its color and details, leaves an impression of beauty, unless 
it fills the chamber of the eye harmoniously, or attracts the eye in 
a series of plans ; the former, and by far the more frequent, repre- 
senting repose; the other, movement. 

d. To illustrate these feelings, the impressions of a child may 
;be more forcible than my reasonings, so that I remember, in point, 
ithat, a few days ago, my grand-son, Edward, after having been suc- 
icessively interested, in a gallery, with the pictures of cows, ships, 
landscapes, etc., remained, till taken away, before an engraving of the 
Mariage de Marie et Joseph. It could not have been the religious 
interest, since the litde fellow is hardly three years old; it was be- 
cause the distribution of the figures, from the high priest and temple 
to the accessories, is composed of hnes so convergent and harmon- 
ious that they fill the fundus of the organ of vision, so as not to 
permit the look to divert from this truly pre-raphaelic creation of Ra- 
phael. Let us admit that this wonderful ideal could have passed be- 
fore his eye (like an object passes before a looking-glass), without 
entering as an image, nor remaining as an idea, had not the child 
been used, from the end of his first year, to look at, and to poinl out 
pictures, and even to attach ideas to portraits, etc. 

Such is the organic and trained origin of the most ideal of our 
enjoyments. Let us draw also from this famUiar illustration an ex- 
ceedingly important truth, which is that, in the "beaux arts," as well 
as in the "mdustrial arts," the feelings must be homologous between 
the centre and the periphery, the artist who creates, and the public 
who appreciates ; therefore, that it is not enough to have educated 
Vinci, Poussin, Mieris, Van Dyke, but the people also must be edu- 
cated in the art of receiving the art impressions as the Athenians, — 
not only, like the Athenians, for enjoyment, but for the transferrence 
of the sense of the "beautiful" to all the productions and surround- 
ings of life. 

e. Another condition of the beautiful is conformity to certain 
proportions which give the style. To attain this, rules have been 
set down at the end of fruitful periods, as by Vitruvius when the 
Greek art became Romanized ; by Titian, and later by Raphael Mengs, 
and Winkelmann, when the Renaissance was producing its last 
models. From their doctrines and judgments, it appears that, be- 
hind all the art-creations — from a simple crayon to a sculptured figure, 
or a pile Hke the Parthenon, the cathedral of Cologne or that of Veze- 
ley, there are—besides and further behind the concept — pre-conceived 
proportions which constitute the style of the oeuvre. 

These proportions are the result of the relations of the parts to 



166 

a type, "the accepted beautiful." At some times and places, these 
proportions were so many diameters or heads to the height ; one- 
seventh was a low type, one-eleventh was the most elegant — rather 
slim. Each style had its partisans, also each had its destination. 
A temple to Neptune could not be supported by a light Corynthian 
order. Trianon was less severe than Versailles, more so than the 
Dresden coiir d'honneur^ etc. Tlie statues of Jean Goujon were 
taller than Bouchardon's, the Coustous and the Coisevox as svelte 
as Venitians, etc. 

Every one his style, that is his comprehension of the propor- 
tions of the parts with the whole. But this comprehension, not only 
by the artist, but by the whole world for his judge, depended on the 
acceptance of a common type-measure, whose divisions served as 
rule or criteriam of beauty. These art periods had their metre ; 
and what we admire in their productions, is their fidelity to their 
type or metre. — I was sure the metre would overtake us again; now 
is the tmie for our own metre to be the standard measure, not only 
of all objects of art and monuments, but of all that which we make 
with our hand and matter ; from a statue to a wooden shoe. All work 
is judged by that standard, the proportion of the parts to its type- 
measure of beauty. 

f. Not only I acknowledge, but I am glad to acknowledge, 
that the perusal of the master pieces is not necessary — though it 
helps — to form the test which every one must possess, if not as a pro- 
ductive, as a recipient artist. In the absence of a Bouquet Monte 
by Van Spaendonck, a handful of wild flowers will do ; without a 
Terburgh, the museum of the street-cars is an open port folio. I 
bear this testimony the more earnesdy, since the lameness of lan- 
guage to follow ideas, causes me to separate the industrial from the 
fine arts, instead of uniting both (as I wished to do) with the most 
sacred, the home art, which is to the art universal, what the Lares 
were to an abstract Deity. 

g. In view of the soothing and extensive influence of this 
home art, it is good to teach it early ; not to let children imagine 
that all the art is in galleries, framed, or under glass, even in the 
atelier, but to make them feel it at home, and realize it in themselves, 
since every woman, child, or man is at liberty to treat himself as an 
object of art ; that is, to make one's self harmonious in dress, man- 
ners, voice, to the home gradually peopled with Penates, or sou- 
venirs of the successive ages of the family. By choice or by time, 
these surroundings harmonize with the old folks, and the young ones 
harmonize with the whole, to make a living tableau, which may at- 
tain to the dignity of a Valasquez. Of all the arts, let us cultivate, 
by preference, the living ones, which can set us, ourselves, up as 
models. At any rate, if the home is not a humbug, — and if it is, 

1 1 soon shows itself to be so, — the home art, unconscious of itself, soon 



167 

arranges its materials so that it represents the innermost mind which 
cogitates in their midst. But let the arrangement be conscious, ele- 
vated, and healthy ; then it will react stronger on the mind which con- 
ceived it, and on the senses which created it in their serene harmony. 

i. No other plan will accomplish this end better than the 
psycho-physiological training of the senses. This traming will keep 
sentries wide-awake to the approaches of unclean viciousness, give to 
the mind that turn upward which makes a child aspire to the best 
associations, and carry him through life, noble in figure as well as in 
character; that is the art by excellence. 

I must add a few more lines for those who, feebly touched by 
generalities, demand practical means of instruction. 

y. In art we cannot begin too soon. We have surrounded 
the cradle (Part I) with objects interesting by their colors, move- 
ments, etc. We have sent the child out, as soon as he could walk, 
with the stimulus of something to look at, even held him u; to his 
point of vision and perspective ; educated his index, with ours, to 
indicate to the eye what is to be looked at ; now we gather his forces 
of perception on what circumscribes and defines everything : the line. 

k. The line, proof of the identity, expression of the vitality 
of ideas, language given to brute matter (so crdled) to make it in- 
telligible, even eloquent. — He who learns to read the "lines," reads 
a "book" larger than all our Ubraries; whose unknown volumes, 
which can be likened to those of the Sibyl's, difter from them in 
this, that they have not been burnt, but remain as yet unopened. 
Therefore, to make a child follow lines, to intercept with a glance 
their junction, to form a plan or a solid ; to reproduce these phys- 
iognomic traits of "objects" with the righteous concourse of an un- 
prejudiced eye and of a confident hand, is the means of opening to 
the awakening senses and mind the proscenium of nature. 

Therefore, let the child find and reproduce the lines and con- 
nections whence result "plans, figures, and contours," long before 
"writing and reading." Let him comprehend simultaneously these 
three languages of objects in their triple form of substances, of plan, 
oi line. Let him begin, say : by a building of bricks or wooden 
blocks, a plan of it in paper or paste-board, and its line-reproduction 
on the blackboard ; then, inversely, the line-figure on a plan, then 
cut in paper, then modeled in clay, or wax, or other material. Thus 
you exercise at once the hand to reproduce the same thing in its 
different forms, the eye to extract, and the mind to abstract the 
ideal of these forms from their diverse material envelopes. Your 
child has learned, not only to draw and model after the method ex- 
posed above, but to extract ideal forms from matter, to idealize his 
sensory perceptions, and to store them for future use. 

/. The kindergarteners understand the role of drawing in edu- 
cation, and cannot be too much prized for having gathered-in the 



. 168 

now scattered work-and-play occupations which once kept together, 
around the hearth, children with their parents in the spare hours 
of evening, etc. But these zealous teachers of the infant must be 
warned of the one-sidedness of their efforts. In line drawing, sew- 
ing, cutting, building, etc., they make their pupils' work-and-play al- 
ways on the bi-lateral plan, which excludes the '^imprevn,'' from the 
imagination, in favor of the foreseen, and induces an unavoidable 
symmetry. This training is good as far as it goes, but it stops where 
automatism ceases ; whereas each of the symmetrical exercises must, 
in my opinion, be followed or preceded by an asymmetric one, in 
order to represent, side by side, the two forms of drawing found in 
nature. So we do for idiotic children. — Froebel himself, not a Josse 
but a progressive mind, would have found no fault in this correction; 
rather — completion of his views. 

m. To conclude, I ask : What is the place of drawing in 
education. . . .? As it leads to the higher and lesser arts, helps the 
jeweler, laborer, artisan, the inventor to create, and the woman to 
subdue ; and gives a feeling of satisfaction when present, and one 
of uneasiness when we miss it; Hkewise its place is at all the degrees, 
and particularly in the first steps of the grades of education. In 
the high-schools as- a branch of the fine arts, of mathematics, phys- 
ics, etc. ; in the secondary schools, as an accompHshment event- 
ually useful, and in the primary as a necessity. For the masses will 
not go farther, and the poorer the man, the better educated his 
hand must 1 i\ 

So drawing at all the degrees of education; for rich or poor, 
infant or adolescent, — ^'drawing taught like writing," as said De La- 
borde after seeing the London Exhibition of 185 1. 

n. The difference between teaching drav/ing to future artists 
and to artisans (which latter expression involves all who "use" their 
hands), cannot be too strongly marked. Several schools suffer from 
this confusion, the Austrian and the Italian, the French, too, not- 
withstanding the protests and practical efforts of Octin, of Paris. 
Even in Kensington the distinction does not seem well drawn, at 
least in the programme. In practice, this school has certainly given 
an impulse to the "Industrial arts," though its London exhibitions 
are mainly of the "beaux arts." But I have seen more "useful art" 
at the branch school of Manchester, not to speak of the other pro- 
vincial branches I know only by reports. 

In these schools, as well as in Buda-Pesth, Brussels, x'\msterdam, 
Turin, the teaching is divided in two parts : the general, which is 
obligatory, and the technics, of which each pupil chooses one. 

As for what they call "methods," that is a big name for a small 
thing, at least not bigger than the man who affixes his name to it. 
Let us call it "individual manner," .except that of Pestalozzi at 
Yverdun, the cradle of the "new education."] 



169 

From the standpoint ot the principles, there is only one true 
drawing, that is from nature, instead of from others' drawings ; and 
two methods : (a) one wiiich leaves the field — or plan to draw 
upon — a blank upon which the imagination images, and the hand 
traces the image, (b) The second method covers the plan with 
lines or points of reference which serve as guides to the eye and hand. 
Froebel adopted this latter course, likely the easier for infants, whose 
hand, alert at automatism, is irresolute under the dictates of a yet 
confused imagination. 

With due homage to Ramsauer, Boniface, Daix, Dupuis, Walter 
Smith of Boston, Marcus Wilson of New York, Hendricks of Brus- 
sels, and others, for their excellent work in special and in public 
schools, we favor the former plan. Reduce the drawing in the 
primary school to its physiological element, the training of the eye 
and of the hand. To understand this, it is necessary to remember 
that the hand has learned the forms by the tact, which takes 
cognizance of the reality ; and that the eye has learned the same 
from perspective, which is the mode of receiving impressions on the 
retina. 

Though, on the main, these two modes of perception (and 
of execution) are confirmatory one of the other, they give some- 
times ditferent, even contradictory, results, according to the 
prevalence of the hand on the eye, or of the eye on the hand, as 
seen in the Chinese art compared to the European. A practical 
illustration of this in the school would be of a ladder: if drawn 
twenty times as ii is (felt by the hand) it will present twenty times 
the same ladder ; but drawn as it looks in twenty different perspec- 
tives, it will present twenty different images. 

How important for working people that the hand does not 
betray the eye, nor the eye mislead the hand; therefore, let the two 
forms of drawing, the real and the ideal, be taught separately and 
conjointly. The former comprises the lines and their dimensions 
(metric), their directions (geometric), and proportions (metric), and 
their angles of intersection or origin. The second comprises the 
linear perspective, the conventional drawing, and the projections : 
for which part M. F. Aborn, of Cleveland, received, at the exhibition 
of Pans, just commendation. 

79. — Writing and Reading, a. We have said : "drawing 
before writing," as vve practiced it in the school for idiots before 1840. 

b. There are two methods of teaching it ; by the sitniale the 
child writes as soon, as much, and as badly as possible ; by the 
physiological, he draws before he writes, m the following order : From 
a vertical line to a horizontal, thence an oblique, a curve ; one line 
generated from another, and their combinations giving numberless 
figures, among which will be those of the letters ; if the child, from 
this crowd of figures, recognize the printed letters he met in the 



170 

books ^ etc. ; or vice versa, recognize those of the books, etc., as 
identical in form to those on his blackboard, then it is time they 
are named to him ; he must have the form before the name instead 
of the name before the form, — an all important difference. Since 
even supposing him to receive at the same time the double notion 
of form and naine included in the idea of letter, the notion of form 
soon becomes merged, for the eye, in the group-notion of syllable, 
and then with the more complicated group-notion of word ; and 
the hand, in the act of writing, led by the eye and spurred by the 
mind, attenuates the individuality of each letter, in favor of that 
of the word and for brevity's sake, till the paper is covered with a 
sort of word-hieroglyph legible only to the initiated, not always by 
the writer himself. Whereas, when the hand and mind have been 
at first bent on the form of each letter, this form is not so easily 
melted in the common pi. 

c. The simple fact is, the more we write, the worse we write, 
till our chirography has become a disgrace to our civilization. In 
proof of which, whoever goes to the British Museum, to the National 
Library of Paris, and other such places, after having tried his best to 
decipher affectionate riddles from home, and sees the brick-books 
of the ancient Asiatics, and the pencilled letters and firmans 
of modern Orientals, cannot let his beguiled eye fall on his own 
hand without a feeling of humiliation, and the wish that the next 
generation, at least, may write a better hand. 

d. Various causes have contributed to this degradation : The 
amount of business now registered, which once was intrusted to 
good faith ; the demand for quick interchange of communications, 
the rapidity of our thought and the besoin of speaking them afar, 
have so taxed the material capacity of the hand to write, that we 
begin to feel that we can no more put up with the exigencies of our 
twenty-five letters, than could the Greeks' m<^ntal activity do with 
the Egyptian hieroglyphs, or the Phoenician alphabet. 

e. But the mischief done by over-writing is not all material. 
After years of inordinate writing and ciphering at school, the 
young people rise from the benches, and on the strength of their 
capacity for copying and figuring, fall upon society to be fed as 
clerks. A pretended education has crippled them of all virile power 
of production. Less modest, other scholars attempt to write, from 
the unconsciousness of their reminiscences, books which call in vain 
for an Omar, and whose destiny is more ignominious than fire. 
There are so many reasons for not allowing children to read too 
soon, that I almost forgot to mention the strongest, that is the most 
physiological. — As soon as we, young or old, have taken to the 
habit of asking the book for what it is in our power to learn from 
personal observation, we dismiss our organ of perception and com- 
prehension from their righteous charge, and cover the emptiness 
of our own mind with the patch- work of others. 



171 — 

The same chiromania has enfeebled and made scarce the power 
of speech. — Writing, instead of speaking, and writing from books 
mstead of from nature, have made lare original minds and genuine 
men. All have copied from the same books (school-books), and 
afterwards trom each other, till, when we come in contact with any 
of them, we cannot detect a difference ; all the same like billiard balls. 
Another mconvenience is that, having learned to write from books, 
the scholars have two styles — one in writing, the other in speak- 
ing • one bombast, the other oftener incorrect than otherwise, — 
instead of a single natural language. Not meaning to strike by this 
criticism "the man of the moon," we would like to exchange our 
two styles (of writing and speaking) for the single one resulting 
from our own temperament, and, having mainly this country in view, 
we wish that a physiological system of national education could 
perpetuate the double American fine art of speaking manly when 
standing nobly. 

/. Co?tclusions. — The time has arrived when a division of la- 
bor in the means of transmission of thoughts must bring a relief to 
the hand and to the mind : First, by the teaching, in school, of the 
fairest symbols which are possible when two or three lines only will 
be traced two or three times a day, like painting : "paint your let- 
ters," my old writing-master used to say ; second, by teaching to 
all a short-hand made obliajatory in the exercises ; and third, by the 
use, in school and inter-schools, of the electric telegraph and tele- 
phone, keeping in turn each pupil as a sentry at this post of com- 
munication. 

So. — Speaking and Talking, a. I just said, let us improve 
the American fine art of speaking manly. I would add not a word 
if that art was not, instead of improved, endangered by other causes 
than the excess of writing. 

The excessive num.ber of pupils crowded in too large class- 
rooms makes young voices inaudible, unless they are forced above 
their natural diapason, mainly by infants and girls. They feel their 
incapacity, and in their effort for being heard, they rough (eraille) 
the edges of their vocal cords, and will never be able to emit a 
velvety or silvery sound. 

This defect, rendered more violent by its contrast with the 
sweet countenance and faces, becomes a habit by three stimuH : one 
from the teacher who cannot speak (and command) five hours in 
the aforsaid conditions without straining, therefore harshing her 
voice ; the second, from the excess of recitation over colloquial 
narration; the third, by the see-saw counting, singing, etc., which, 
besides giving horrible bends to the voice, hypnotise the mind. 

Such defects of the voice become contagious. From some 
schools, "-rkok du soldaf for instance, spreads over a whole nation 

(19) 



172 

the strident and gutteral syllable of command ; the man who col- 
lects your faro demands it in a dry, coppery tone ; and all around 
every one corporalizes everybody, as if they were, one and all, le 
petit co7'poraL — Oh ! my ears ! 

b. The first thing, when we want a child to speak, is not to 
command him to "open his mouth and keep his teeth apart," as 
advised by the good Rollin, but to see that he is, as a whole, "ready 
to speak," that is, in a proper posture, viz : the main support on the 
left, to steady the heart ; the hand of the same side holding the book 
in reading; in speaking, helping the right, not so much for oratory 
gesture as for the physiological movements of tlie arms which fill 
up the lungs, and give or economize the voice ; then deep inspira- 
rations, silently made, to clear up the air-tubes and cells, expand the 
chest, and give the measure of the possible length of the sonorous 
expirations to which a long period can be intrusted. 

c. To "talk" [causer), a reclining posture is preferable to the 
stork one, — as allowing the thoughts to run more leisurely, and the 
image to take softer tints. Then an occasional sally must here and there 
clear up the bronchia, and stimulate the diaphragm, since laugh- 
ing is the healthiest of the arts, one which cannot be too much 
cultivated and applauded in children. But who will teach it ? The 
school offers a few opportunities, and the teacher, it seems, has no 
time. However, let us remember recess, excursions, museums, and 
garden-lessons, — opportunities, in, and after which, the reclining 
couch upholstered with grass, moss, bark, or granite, invites the 
child, as well as the adolescent, to palavers and Decamerons. 

Let us afiirm, also, that the parents, — every year better informed 
of their educational duties toward their charge, — will learn how to 
continue the school at home. This is a dangerous hint, which I 
would not have put forward if I could not quahfy it in a few words. 

d. When the school is over, study must be over, too. There is 
time for the girl to learn how to manage a home (under the plea ot 
helping her mother, or of mothering her youngers), — no mean 
accompHshment ; there is time for the boy to try his hand at the 
accessories of the pursuit of his father, or of some friend, — a good test 
of future avocations ; and there is yet more time, in the afternoons 
and evenings, during the days and weeks of vacation, for sports and 
healthy exercises. Walks, visiting manufactories, rare engines, 
periodical exhibitions, and the like, which form a group, and in 
another cluster, reading aloud, reciting poetry, and dialogues, 
declaiming, narrating and talking either from memory or impromptu, 
ought to be the daily gymnastics of the lungs and of the function ot 
imaging which elates and elevates the imagination. The parents 
who shun these evening operas-boufife, will get their desert in the 
neglect of their children less than twenty years hence. Since the 
school supplements the family, the family must complement the 
school. 



___ 173 

In this pre and post family-education, the father trains the eye 
and hand of the child, and the mother charms his ear, when sewing 
and knitting, or drawing on canvas, by talks which sound like 
music. After one of these stories, Eddy says : "Mamma, more sing- 
ing; more singing, Mammal" Had the Pharao Necho listened to 
a three-yearling, he would not have instituted his famed philological 
inquiry, and be baffled by a baby and a goat. 

8i. Language. — Let us remember this in the next paragraph ; 
for the present suffice it to say that language is music to the ear be- 
fore it becomes ratio io the mind ; that old languages were incanted, 
and so are their remnants and amalgams cal'ed "patois." 

a. Primaries of language. — When looking at the child in his 
cradle (Part I), we might have seen that the best teacher of the 
language is the mother, the best vocabulary a mellow voice singing 
in alternation double and contrasting sounds. What does the baby 
understand of what she says ? Who can tell, since he does not speak 
yet ? Never mind, he can tell. To a laughing voice he answers by 
a laugh, to a scolding, not addressed to him but simply vibrating in 
his atmosphere, he cries. He, like the deaf-mutes, understands of 
our language the passional qualities of its vibrations. But soon, 
when nature or the city begins to take its evening rest, the 
mother's incantations become more articulated, and the child, better 
prepared to listen, falls asleep with the roll in his ears of these new 
syllables, which, after lurking in his dream, come first out of his 
throat in the morning, 

b. But now, what a change ! He is at school. The voice of 
command is rarely softened by affectionate vibrations ; he is seated 
among the engines of obedience, in variable, yet almost always un- 
comfortable attitudes, mumbling lessons and reciting them ; and 
what lessons ? On what he has seen, can love, searches, desires, is 
curious about ? No. The subjects on which his attention is called 
are more indifferent than otherwise. Vide his book, full of matter 
good to learn, but not of matter which could provoke children to 
talk, to develop and use their inward dictionary ; and the latter is 
what needs to be created to form their "Thesaurus of English 
words," according to the comprehensive expression of Peter Mark 
Roget ; which will put at their command a thesaurus of ideas. 

c. Objects and images introduced in the school to iiicrease 
knowledge, have been also employed to provoke language to come 
out. But what can teach language better than speech itself? Vide 
the mother. She taught speech by speaking herself, showing that 
the great master of language is not the book, the image, the ob- 
ject, but the physiological method of inciting in a child, and in 
propagating in children, the besoin de parler, which, from being con- 
tagious, becomes unanimous. This method employs two processes, 
which] the mother has intuitively followed: one is didactic, the 
other, spontaneous. 



174 

d. By the didactic, the words are read in their ideologic order 
(not in the alphabetic) under two heads of affirmative and negative, 
and the children must recall them when the teacher, or an ad- 
vanced pupil, writes them in their respective columns on the 
blackboard, and continues to provoke answers till all the expres- 
sions known as analogous and contrastant stand opposite each other 
before the class. The children complement each other's dictionary 
in this way. vSupposing the girls and boys on different aisles of the 
room, or any other division of the pupils ; a noun is given to a divi- 
sion whose members must find all its analogies, and the opposite 
division all its contraries, or the corresponding verbs are asked from 
one division, and the adjectives from another. The children who 
have found an answer raise a finger, the teacher points with his to 
the child allowed to speak \ every word flows from these various 
sources as from a single one; and hardly a definition is called for 
to redress mistakes or to give more relief to an idea, the juxtaposi- 
tion suffices to light up analogies and contrasts. The same method 
serves to teach, comparatively, two languages. 

<f. By the second exercise, the children serve alternately as 
models and critics to each other, and, being all liable to be called to 
speak, must, every one of them, have every day something ready to 
be said. This something must be called from their self-experience, 
sensation, and living feeling ; as an incident which has just happened, 
to be told for the freshness of its details and colors ; a scene in the 
street, a new object of art or a pattern of fashion, a party, something 
grotesque, a word wittily report'^d, or a quotation sensibly repeated. 
For instance, of the power of "diction" given by the mastery of lan- 
guage, when S. B., just out of school, demanded admission to the 
conservatoire of Paris, Aubert, president of the concourse, seeing 
the frail creature, compassionately said : "Mon enfant, can you recite 
something?" — "Oh ! (long and low) yes, sir." — "You are so young; tell 
us a fable." — She began : "Deux pigeons s'aimaient d'amour tendre." 
—Aubert, interrupting : "Messieurs, she is received." — "But," re- 
monstrated one of the judges, "she has said only a verse." — "Precise- 
ly that is enough, she is received ;" and the other judges received her 
in the school, whence she came a writer, a painter, a sculptor. 
Donna Sol. 

Far from this quadruple fecundity of means of expressing their 
ideas, experience, and passions, children have been educated and 
live mtellectually upon an incredibly small provender of words. 
Some "educated" people have not actually twenty adjectives to color 
their facts, nor twenty verbs to express the modes of activity. For 
these scholars, everything is nice or funny ; or put in, out, up, down, 
away, etc. But they "make up," meaning compensate this paucity 
of language, by "accomplishments." Yes, the school which cannot 
train the functions of a physiological order, and supply the people 



175 

with an abundant language, avenges itself by teaching "accomplish- 
ments" like the correct spelling of words which need not be used, 
or are not needed ; the talent of making verses in lieu of poetry ; 
of painting, as far as coloring lithographs and photoes ; and the ex- 
ercise of the piano. — Ah ! par Ions en. 

82. Musical Instruction. — a. The piano is out of place in 
public schools, except as a tuner, when it cannot do all that the 
metronome accomplishes. Marvellous orchestra under the fingers 
of an artist, it has enticed millions of children to lose their time and 
energy in frightening the birds, and sending men out of the house. It 
wastes, every day, millions of irretrievable hours in a solitary auto- 
matic exercise of the ears and of the hand, which is treason to the 
voice and lungs. Luxurious box for breeding pulmonary tubercle 
in darkened parlors, I recognize thee ! Thou wert the time- honored 
"Petrin" (bread-box) of our ancestors. When you began your 
chirping, our witty fathers called thee ''Epinette,'' in honor of the 
box-pan from which young chickens emit more promising music ; 
and now, iron-lined and bronze caped, deafening when not enchant- 
ing, thou hast grown too big and sonorous for the use of a family 
(unless she is stagy) ; get away from the school. 

If planing had not gone so far, I would not have sent so 
bluntly Its instrument down where it comes from, and up, where it 
had better stay. The music taught in school cannot depend upon 
a cosdy and immovable machine. It is not taught for vanity, but 
to develop the physic, to incite the gaiety which wards off melan- 
choly and insanity, to cultivate the avowable sympathies, and give 
cohesion to the healthy feelings of nationality and humanity in joy 
or peril. 

It recognizes but one instrument, the voice, two parts m the 
teaching, the m- tuition and the in-tonation, whose mathematics are 
regulated by the length given to the j^endulum of a metronome : 
"music is mathematics" (Pythagoras), and can be written in figures 
sooner than in the gothic symbols of the solfege. 

b. This physiological music gives the impulse to the voice, 
thence to the sympathetic centres. "Les coeurs sonl bien pres de 
s'entendre quand les voix ont fraternise." 

It is the music of the nadonal anthems. The other, coming 
out from a box, or from a pipe, narrows and individualizes the feel- 
ings ; this one, coming from the chest, is the only one capable of 
giving expression to true tenderness and national vigor. 

c. The songs of Beranger were stronger than armies in 1830. 
When 1 was preparing this paper, Italy had not yet awakened ; but 
she, having not forgotten her popular songs, did awake in a chorus 
which led her to victory. She at once re-opened her schools of 
music, fine arts, industrial arts, engineering, etc., and the Institute 
of San Felice furnished resuscitating Venice and the whole Penin- 
sula with masters-at-arts. 



— 176 

The leaders of this revohjtion by vocal music were Rouget de 
risle, the Turnvereine, Amoros, the more learned Choron, his 
successor Wilhelm, and Berlioz, Wagner, Galin Cheve, Paris, Vul- 
liemin, Bosson, Meylan, Landa, etc. ; and its schools were the Gym- 
nasia of Germany, the Orpheon of Paris, the Union Scolaires of 
France, the Zofingue of Switzerland, the Ligue de I'Enseignement 
in Belgium, etc. Those are the masters to be consulted, and the 
methods to be adapted to the genius of each people and of their 
youth. 

St,. Imagination. — All the animals imagine, but few can com- 
mand, co-ordinate, and evoke the images unconsciously stored; 
though some do, on some hmited subjects, the same as idiots, with 
a superior accuracy and unerring judgment. Men only can, at will, 
command, co-ordinate, and evoke a large collection of the images 
they have unconsciously or willingly stored ; though few use that 
privilege to any great or useful extent. 

a. Several causes can be assigned to this restricted condition 
of the miaging function, whose exercise furnishes the materials to 
imagination. The one cause interesting here is the early and pre- 
vious transferrence to memory in written form of all that ought to 
be first imaged on the gray matter. But it is quicker to learn from 
books — simple aggregates of the twenty-iive letters — than to store 
de visu and tactu the images with their appurtenances of cause and 
effect. Parents and teachers take advantage of this, to send the 
cjuestioning child to the book. That is why he who knows by read- 
ing, rarely asks for more information, and ceases to be able to know 
more ; while he who has photographed the thing, can always evoke 
its ideal to extend its comprehension, and to make it enter into a 
variety of combinations of ideas, which become thus ready for real- 
ization. As an instance and proof: How early have I been taught 
to call "watch" the thing which was coming out of people's pocket 
to tell them how much time they have lost ? I was too young to 
remember ; however, the seed was there, and when, later, the steam 
engine was invented, I read all about it ; consequence, at sixty -eight, 
1 have no clearer idea of these mechanisms than my grand-children 
have of the clock of Strassburg, and so it is for all people about all 
things. Men can teach easier the words "watch, engine," than they 
can impress on the young minds their forms, uses, and eventual 
adaptations. This consideration decides the point. That is why 
children know so much, and care so little now-a-days. Then, was 
it belter sixty hundred years ago ? It was worse, but considering 
the social conditions, we must know and do so much more ; that is, 
almost all our knowledge must be turned into powers, through our 
images and imaging faculties. 

h. For imagination is more than a decorative attribute of 
leisure. It is a "power" in this sense, that from images perceived 



177 _ 

and stored, it sublimes ideals ; and conversely substantiates the ideals 
once erected in the mind as abstract entities. That is why the training 
of imagination must be part of the plainest education, since a person 
living from others' work may have it or not ; but living upon their 
own work, persons, be they poets, tailors, jewellers, etc., would, with- 
out it, starve or descend to the level of a wheel without cranks in 
the social machine. The consequence of the possession or depri- 
vation of this superior mstrument of labor is so portentous, that, had 
I the choice of one out of two great calamities to befall the children 
I love, I would sooner see them unalphabetic than unimaginative. 

c. Imagination needs to be educated, like the other psyclio- 
logical operations of the organism. Three ways were opened : by 
models, l)y observation, and by psycho- physiological education. 

d. The method of inciting the imagination by the constant 
exhibitions of models, long prevailed. It consists in presenting to 
fresh imaginations the images used in old and recent imageries, from 
poets, mythologies, and treasurers of the monstrous, the fantastic, 
and other impossibilities ; so impossible, that, with their young desire 
of imagining, pupils could only copy these night-mare classic 
images. The classical furrow was so deep that, when the Christians 
wanted to people the imagination of their catechumens with new 
images, they had to use the pagan ones, hardly travestied in frocks 
and names. And when the pagan poets and artists, successors of 
Holbein, Diirer, Venuci, resolved upon starting a Renaissance to 
please the Medici and Leo X., they opened the era of the lascivious 
saints, and of Popes of bronze garlanded with Phrynes of white 
marble {vide Saint Peter's basilic). The same furrow has so deepened 
and enlarged, that when Napoleon came from Egypt with savants 
and artists from whom something new was expected, he and they 
infected their country with pylones and sphinxes; when Charles X. 
ruled, the Gothic oppressed ; Victoria Elizabethised England, who 
begins to know better; and when Eugenie returned from Suez, 
Cleopatras v\^ere rife in France. So much for the imagination of the 
imitative, alias historical, alias classical school. 

e. In the industrial arts, more imagination was shown ; owing, 
probably, to new besoins and new materials which, recendy em- 
ployed in industry, demanded original observations, and gave 
somewhat new results. This school has obtained the latter mainly 
by giving object lessoJis^ which can be praised for having cleared the 
brain from faded images and phantasms more decrepit than the 
witches of Shakespeare ; but not for the creation of ideals. It is, 
after all, a school of fruits sees. 

f. The methodical extraction of ideals from objective matters 
is the recent conquest of a phycho-physiological method of in- 
struction. Deprecating — as nature itself does — the separation of the 
would-be spirit from the would-be matter, this method searches the 



178 

one In the other, attaching an idea to every form, giving a form to 
every idea. In this sense, and in this way, man is as much a creator 
as nature itself. 

g. This method rests upon the c.ipability of conduction — to 
and fro between the sensorium and the senses; — in the present in 
stance of the capabihty of the eye, as an optical instrument, to 
receive images, and to transmit them photo-electrically at the 
other end of the optic nerve, where they can be registered; 
— upon the capacity of the mind to survey the details of this 
physiologic operation, to classify and to locate the images where- 
from they can be readily called, with their homologies and con- 
trasts ; — upon the sympathetic impulse which prompts the evocation 
of these images at the call of "besoin ;" — upon the psychic capacity 
of creating ideals from these miages and their combinations; — upon 
the psycho-physiological capacity of giving to the primary images, 
and to the ideals sublimed from them, a body, sensible (to one or 
more of our senses) effect and cause of the creative and sentient 
power of imagination. 

The fact of making children receive a physical impression or 
image ; of storing it wherefrom they can call it for use ; of idealizing 
that impression, or its combination with others; of recalling, on de- 
mand, either the image (imago), or its ideal (idea) ; of rendering a 
body to that image or ideal, so that it can be once more enjoyed 
in substance, — such is the problem, much more difficult to explain 
metaphysically than to solve practically. In practice, the training 
of the imagination of children is rendered easy by beginning with 
simple material on the most psycho-physioiogical plan. 

h. To begin low enough, let us take the simplest object whose 
proportions are homologous, yet different ; say : a block 1x2x4, later 
several like it. — ist. You put that block in a certain position on the 
table ; the child to do the same with a like block, seeing yours. 
2nd. You put your block up, and take it away as soon as he has 
seen it, and he must, from memory, put his as yours was. 3rd. You 
arrange together two, three, or more blocks, so as to make of them 
a figure, and you cause him to make the same dc visu. 4th. 
You make another figure, and when he has seen it, you destroy 
it, asking him to reproduce it at once from the ''imago" of 
yours, left in his imagery. 5th. You make another figure, and 
when he has seen it, you destroy it and ask him, hours and days 
afterward, to represent it. 6th. You choose, and treat as above, 
objects heterogeneous in substance, color, or form, to make figures 
more or less complicated, causing the child to imitate them from sight, 
then from memory; so that in these exercises of imaging and 
imagining, the mind, the senses, and the hand executrice re-pass 
through the series of operations, which constitute a complete exer- 
cise of imagination. 7th. After this, you rarely choose, rather point 



179 

out, the occurrent things whose images the child must register in de- 
tail on the spot ; images which you will recall at opportune times, 
to allow him either to revivify their colors and lines, if they are 
worth preserving for future use, or to reproduce them now, at your 
bidding, in substance, in picture, trait, or words. 8th. The first 
and the last operations of imaginadon, viz. : the percepdon and 
the re-creation of the objects of imagination, are susceptible of as- 
suming several forms, of which the most interesting here are the 
substantial, the pictorial, the linear, and the verbal. 

Some persons contend that the thing itself contains more in- 
formation than its picture, trait, or description. It is not always so, 
on account either of the nature of the object, or of the percepdve 
qualides of the subject in training. Moreover, the physiological 
method of developing the powers (not the fancies) of imagination, 
does not exclude, but exercises these powers in their various forms : 
a. by the object itself, which explains many relations ; b. by the 
color, which animates ; c. by the trait, which precises j d. lastly, 
by the language, which enters where the senses cannot penetrate. 

Is it to say, that every impression and expression of the imagin- 
ation will have to be completed by these four tests, or more ? No, 
because most of the time the nature of the objective gives sufficient 
indications of the one test of thoroughness it requires ; no, again, 
because this form of training is so -'entraining," that, once drilled to 
it, the faculty of the child will follow it as the bird follows the track 
of his "besoin." Yes, soon the child will, in the presence of any 
sight, perceive all its details and be able to reproduce them with one 
or the other of the "graphics" at the disposal of his imagination; 
and man, he will not see a machine, without being able to work it, 
nay, to correct it, in his imagination, and if he tries to realize any of 
his own inventions, it will be with the image (imago) of what he 
wants, so complete and accurate, that it will look as if it had come 
out complete from his head, as Minerva from Jupiter's, perfect 
emblem of a product of imagination equipoised by taste and com- 
mon sense. 

/. But imagination does not feed exclusively on things descrip- 
tive and material, it craves, and justly so, for models of moral, 
intellectual, and physical excellence. At all degrees of civilization, 
the interest attached to the reading of the human face is intense, at 
all ages, too. The child already alluded to interrupts my scriboling 
by introducing Washington, Franklin, Lafayette, Clinton, Humboldt, 
a crowd a hundred strong or about ; each with his tide to notoriety: 
Stephenson, who made the first railroad ; Fulton, who built the first 
steamboat ; Constantine, the tyrant of Warsaw, (pointing to his eyes) 
"a bad man." 

The economical loss by want of the training of the imagination 
in the masses retards the elevation to their due ranks of the working 

(20) 



180 

classes, and causes an annual deficit of millions. But the damage 
caused to society by the absence of education of imagination, and 
the consequent mcapacity of the people to read the countenances 
like books, allows brigands to play the part of leading citizens to a 
moral cost which cannot be valued in figures. 

j. Looking higher, what are we without an imagination, active 

or only reflective ? . (I do not mean to speak of the imagination 

"Folle du Logis," which amuses the idlers as "Le Fou du Roi" amuses 
the court.) The imagination I invoke, I provoke, I evoke from the 
innermost recess of philosophical history and mental physiology is 
the one which, — industrious as a bee, — preying (butinant) on all 
sides, receives and registers images, sublimes from them pure ideals, 
composite ideas, generalizations, and returns these entities, realities at 
the end of the neurotic circuit. 

This is, in action, the nervous function for the training of which 
is claimed a large place in the family, and in the school. Youth is 
the age for its physiological development. "Make hay while the 
sun shines," that is, make provision — rather — treasures of impres- 
sions on the fresh, impressive tablets of the sensorium. The child, 
having, from the start, stocked this "imagery" with simple images, 
from the lines which circumscribe a quadrilateral and triangle, dif- 
ferentiate two leaves, etc., soon arrives at the confines of his mfantile 
domain, and his imagination asks for more. It is then, when the 
primary simple impressions have been registered as such, that, having 
made, Kke Robinson Crusoe, the tour of his island, he undertakes other 
excursions, during which his imagination does not register things 
isolated as they appeared at the first look, but as they appear now, 
and really are in relation to each other, to their causes and effects, 
etc. 

This co-relative view of thmgs, their ratio; almost nihil ^ at least 
imperceptible at first, becomes more and more the important part of 
the perceived images, till imagination, becoming used to receive and 
send forth the cause for the effect, the abstract for the concrete, the 
induction for the proof, constantly creates new relations between 
things and opens new vistas upon the relations between things and 
ideals. It is so, that between the simplest image, and the ideal it 
suscitates, imagination images new ideals, new relations, and appli- 
cations thereof; and by its incessant synergy, {vis) peoples the 
invisible world with the images from the visible world; and fills the 
visible world with the realizations, in substance, of the ideals, concepts 
of the invisible world. 

k. In this (^uvre of incessant creation and revelation, the 
main cause of miscarriage to be avoided would be the early prece- 
dence usually given to the written, over the substantial image ; 
for once, accepted in words, writing remains incorrectible and inex- 
tensible ; its infecundity being measurable by the paralyzing efifect 



181 

which the use of "locutions" — instead of fresh descriptions for new 
ideas — has upon imagination. Imagination clothed in "locutions" 
instead of in its natural colors of each moment, looks like a butterfly 
which would, if he could, re-enter the cast-off skin of another 
lepidoptere's chrysalis. 

/. The efforts of the best schools I have named, tend to 
accomplish this evolution in teaching v\''hich was prepared in the 
school for idiots. This origin throws a light on the processes here 
advocated and described. Children (idiots) having no ideas, were 
made to have some, by the physiological rectification of the doors 
and windows of perceptions ; having no useful activity, they were 
given some by training their tactile and muscular senses, etc. ; and 
even images worked in them desires, and operations of the imagin- 
ation. 

But the finest results of the training of imagination by the 
physiological method — obtained to a limited extent with idiots — 
obtainable to an illimited and even unsuspected extent with all other 
children, is the power given to a healthy imagination to eliminate 
the vicious images, which, once formed, would become almost irre- 
sistible incentives to degraded habits, and to cultivate the faculty of 
selecting the best models, of idealizing and of realizing them in their 
daily work, and in their life high or low, as the artist tries to realize 
his ideal of the beaudful. 

Is not man, after all, working at the highest object of art, 
whea he strives to bring his own self to the highest standard of man- 
hood attainable by his imagination ? When the ancients had realized 
this type, they made it one of their gods ; let us reahze it in making 
all our children men. 

It is by the exercise of this function of receiving impressions 
at the windows of the senses, and of returning them idealized at the 
door of the organs of execution, that we owe the "fa,culty" of cre- 
ating what must, therefore will be. It is so that, from the "rap- 
prochement" or the materials, good or bad, collected during a long 
pilgrimage, have been formed these ideas which demand their ad- 
mission in real life. 

To give to this ideal a cohesion which will bring it nearer real- 
ization, I will neglect points of importance, but of less general in- 
terest, to concentrate the attention on three terminal considerations : 
the school organized physiologically, the scholar, and the teacher. 



183 ^- 



CHAPTER VI. 

School Organization. 

84. — a. As the child is the out-growth of the infant, so the 
physiological primary school must be an extension of the infantile 
experimental field of life, equally misnamed "school" or "kinder- 
garten," smce his school is wherever he can touch, hear, and see, 
and what he can seize of the world is his garden. This view is 
partaken by the best judges, and the "Synoptical Table" of Madame 
de Portugal!, establishing the "filiation of the new primary school 
from the kindergarten," iias been justly rewarded by the jury of the 
Universal Exhibition of Paris, 1878. 

The same idea had been advocated for other schools, but it 
often meets with incompatibles. A connection, sequence, and con- 
tinuity is attaiiiabie between schools which proceed physiologically, 
and from observation ; a sort of broken contmuity may be estab- 
lished between the curriculum of "the A-b-c and authority school" 
and the classical progra mTie of the colleges of "memory and au- 
thority ;" but a cross connection and continuity between the two 
systems, at any point of their course, is impossible, because those 
who run on different plans can never meet. — I do not say that col- 
leges will not be carried on the physiological plan ; I hope they will. 
Till then, they prepare classes, not people. 

Though nothing represents so well the equality taught by Con- 
fucius, and practiced by Jesus, as the first pele-mHe entrance in a 
public school, children are hardly in, than want and social arrange- 
ments knock down the theories, and raise difterences in their man- 
agement. — Some children ofit dii pain sur la planche, others must 
earn their daily bread, even feed their infirm or vicious parents. 
These economical conditions of the children affect the organization 
of their schools. 

b. The school of the poorer wards and manufacturing districts 
— of recent origin — is open all the day to squads of children, (in the 
evening to adults,) to give them, in turn, two hours of instruction be- 
sides their scanty wages. 

c. Then the propordon of labor to schooling is about as fol- 
lows : In Berlin, children must stay at school till fourteen years of 
age, and few under that age are found in the factories. 

In Paris, there is no compulsory law about it ; the custom is to 



183 

keep the children at school till they have made "leur premiere 
communion," 12 to 12^ years old. This difference at the very best 
time for learning would suffice to explain the greater average 
instruction of the same classes in Germany and in France. In the 
country, and in out-of-the-way places, things may be a good deal 
worse. I cannot tell for Germany, but in France, when the law 
ordered two hours of schooling, the masters added these two hours 
to the twelve of labor, making fourteen of nervous tension, without 
relaxation, for children under 14 ; a feat which barbarous physiol- 
ogists never equalled in their exaction of neural force from the 
frog's leg. In England, the model schools of this class are admired 
for the beauty of their mechanism at least, in Manchester, Lancaster, 
and Sheffield, etc. ; but how with the present schooling of the colliers, 
who descend the shaft of death more bravely than Roman gladiators 
entered the colosseum ? Better school hygiene and provisions are 
made for them, no doubt, than m time of the report of Villermey 
(1843), but I could reach them only by hear-say. 

Turning our regard toward home, we, too, have laws for the 
education and protection of children employed in manufactories. 
But in Pittsfield, and other remote places, parents are given to 
understand, that, if they claim the benefit of the law, their children 
will be dismissed : they are such a burden, so many are waiting for the 
places, etc., and in cities, besides the protection ef the law, they have 
the benevolent societies. But the societies prefer doing show work 
— or rescuing a young, promising acrobat from rising in his profession 
— to protecting the children, who rival the Parisians in the Peiits 
Metiers of Mercer street, against the privation of school and the 
temptations of want. 

The organization of that school in its interior arrangements, 
curriculum, and close relations with the organizations of the sur- 
rounding ateliers and manufactures, will be a creation without 
analogy in the past, nor similar in the present, owing to the Ameri- 
can character. But if the urgent besoin of such institutions is not 
satisfied, the national character will suffer a deterioration ; our 
working children will come to maturity, moulded in the vicious and 
ignorant types of Europe ; same causes producing the same effects. 

d. Those who live under a lighter pressure, are capable of 
feeding their children during the school years, provided education 
includes one kind of apprenticeship, and return them to their family 
and to society useful, self-supporting adolescents. 

It is but lately that this claim of the middle working classes 
v/as understood, and satisfied by the adjunction, to the public sciiools, 
of ateliers of training in the most popular labors. These mixed 
schools differ in most of the localities, owing to the local demand 
for skilled mechanics. They dilifer, also, in the proportions of the 
work to the study, whose average may be estimated as follows : 



184 



For Children 



Work 



Before 10 years 

10—12 

12—14 

14—16 

After 16 



I 
Hours. I School 



or 
Industrial j 
Occupations. 



Training 
I or 
Drill 



Hours. 



The municipal school of Havre, timed somewhat differently, is 
one of the best. Having witnessed its beginnings in 1873, and its 
progress six years later, I can vouch for its progress and usefulness. 
It has a capacity of 300 pupils, applications for twice as many, and 
their services are secured by shrewd patrons one year before the 
completion of their training. I have seen them at the desk, the 
blackboard, the bench, and the anvil, and prefer their looks, man- 
ners, and general behavior to the corresponding externals of 
"collegiens." 

e. The same need of skilled labor, felt by the state as by the 
families, has caused the creation of schools exclusive, not so much 
in their curriculum, as in the necessary or invidious sorting of the 
pupils. These institutions are reformatories for the vicious, or con- 
cessions to the low prejudices which cast away colored people, 
Chinese, Jews, etc. It is not of my province to describe or judge 
them, — though some are interesting, as Mettray for juvenile dehn- 
quents, and Hampton for men of color, etc., — but to warn against the 
advantage the communists of the most dangerous class have taken 
to proffer their services, that is, to extend their "moeurs" and morals 
over a large area of nations. 

/. On many pleas ! The lone position of children left without 
a family, timely advice, shelter, and resources, already branded by 
justice before they could comprehend the social why ; the necessity 
for those way-led children of reformation ; for all of education, and par- 
ticularly of the training of their working functions ; the faithlessness of 
the masters who use their apprentices as servants; and the dereliction 
of the practical training by those engaged in public instruction, — 
such are the causes and pretexts of the interference of religious com- 
monalties in education and training matters. 

g. Midway between the family, the school, the shops, and the 
common vvealth, they have opened, about 1840, places called in 
France Ecoles d'apprentis, Ouvroires, and assumed the direction of 
various reformatories which correspond, in essence but not in inten- 
tion, to an actual necessity. They are un besoin real et incontestable^ 
said M. de Salvandy in his Report on the condition of primary in- 
struction in 1843. However, the immoral tendency and disorganiz- 
ing plans of these communistic traps did not escape the foresight 



185 - — 

of that honestly retrograde minister, who added, directly, in his par- 
liamentary but significant language : ^^Mais il ne faiidrait pas que 
ces ctablissements tiftssent lieu d'ecole, la oil mie vh'itable ecole est pos- 
sible, lis doivent done etre soutenus et encourages avec discerneinent, 
tantot comme une ressource auxiliaire, tantot comme un acheniinement 
vers r organisation plus complete de Penseignement. Since these warn- 
ings, (which show, by the by, that it is not original with us to con- 
sider this question as endosmic to that of education, unavoidable 
because it has made itself inevitable) : 

h. The communistic schools have been encouraged, not with the 
discernment recommended by the Secretary of Public Instruction of 
1843, nor, as he formally said, "as a transitory measure till public in- 
struction should be fully organized," but till the religious communists 
have become, in Europe, and America as well, the educational evil 
foreseen by Salvandy. Deadly mistletoe on the devoted oak. 
France and Belgium have opened their eyes on the sore (1879) 
rather late. England and this country do not dare to look at it, and 
hide the "■ulcere honteux" under cover of their free institutions, 
which paralyzes before destroying them. 

Teaching is evidently the label of their aim. The instruction 
they give is inferior, and degraded by historical and moral lies. Their 
training is the means of making children produce, without compen- 
sation, that which the "communaute" sells at a low price; to put 
down the value of labor, and keep both parents and children in sub- 
jection ; habituating them, from infancy, to the conventual forms of 
communism, — the only communism to be dreaded, because, inces- 
santly acquiring, never parting with a mite, it husbands its untold 
treasure to feed or starve the masses, in order to be able to throw 
them one way or another in the scale of events : just the dread of 
Salvandy and the menace of Manning. 

/. Since I pointed out these forerunners in the first edition of 
this Report, public opinion has shaken off its indifterence, and, among 
other cities, Philadelphia is planning a school with shops like the one 
of Havre. Unfortunately, few people here realize yet the want of 
our society to elevate the masses as rapidly as possible to a high 
point of intellectual capacity and of executive ability, and at the 
same time the perils which old Girard tried to avoid when he 
wrote on the corner-stone of his munificent endowment to the or- 
phans : The school to educate, the church or mosque to teach re- 
ligion, the kitchen to learn cookery, etc. 

To Salvandy belongs the honor of having officially said that 
the teaching of the people needs to be "organized," and we add, 
not upon the basis of governmental or religious authority, but upon 
a far-seeing combination of the principles of physiology with the 
dearest besoins of man : the family, the nation, and humanity. 



186 



CHAPTER VII. 

Sex in Education. 

85. From this standpoint, a question precedent over the others 
is that of Sex in Education. It covers, perhaps, as much ground as 
Labor in the School. I will consider it here in regard to the re- 
union of the sexes in the same class, school, etc. 

a. When a society which we have not equalled in many 
respects, was struggling against the invasions of the barbarians, and 
against its own vices — different, not worse, less mean than ours, — 
the desintegrating plan of the founder of monastic life in Upper 
Egypt had ripened. Antoine was old when the two fellow-students 
and antagonists of Julien, Basile and Gregoire, and a little later 
Chrisostome, conferred with the crafty octogenarian upon the exten- 
sion of his pet scheme to the whole empire. This object of their 
conferences can hardly be called hypothetic or secret, since, on 
their return from the Thebais, Basil organized the convent-schools 
and shut-up schools for the separation of the sexes from each other, 
and from the world. Gregoire supported the plan, and John, from 
Sainte Sophia Basilic, and with his bouche d'or, ordered the parents 
to put their children in these communistic schools for ten years or 
more, — whence they came no more citizens, semen aris. 

b. One can understand how — with the means of communica- 
tion the church had perfected for its propaganda, and still uses 
— the next generation could have been, by these means and an 
energetic catechisation, so educated as to remain insensible to the 
slaughter of Hyppatia in a church by Peter, the reader of the 
gospel for Cyril, and their children, indifferent to the treason of the 
bishops at the frontier of Thrace, Pannony, Gaule-Belgique, etc, to 
the invasion and pollution of Constantinople by the monks of Mace- 
doiiius, and to their election to the empire of Justin, "who could 
not read," on condition that he would kill as many heretics and Jews 
as he could, which he did. 

Useless to follow the same plan of education which separates 
the sexes and the young from the world, through the ages — which 
would look more horrible, were they not so dark — when we have 
the soul-sinking spectacle of France, the last country laid bare and 
bleeding, as a punishment for having given her girls to be educated 
without natural passions, and her boys without civil virtues, both 



187 

vo\Ted to obey the craft which has, perhaps, destroyed as many 
societies as the last diluvium. 

Some may say : What is that to us x\mericans ? Anybody con- 
versant with the history of the ideas of the last 25 years, knows what 
influence the separate and conventual education of the sexes has 
had to weaken the partriotic heart during our internal divisions, and 
how near these "educators" were from putting the weight of their 
millions, and of their sworn subjects, nominally citizens, in the scale 
opposed to the continuity of this RepubUc. Indeed, from Mexico 
to New York, and from thence to Montreal, their train of gun- 
powder was continuous, and had not Farragut broken it at New 
Orleans, who knows ? 

c. But the same subject calls for another order of considerations, 
more directly educational, and physiological. 

The fashionable and official society of the 4th and 5th centur- 
ies — to make it short, I let the reader search for the differences 
between these societies and our — was eating the produces of labor 
so fast as to leave nothing, not only for the working and disgusted- 
of-working classes, but even for the once well-to-do land-owners 
(Orosius). The gambling of the factions for power, that is for the 
perception, expenditure and steaHng of the taxes, was so desperate 
that the rich of to-day was beggared tc-morrow, like Bclisarius; the 
votes of the senators were bought by the piece, or by the job, and 
the vilest services were paid by the giving away of military roads, etc. 
Adding to these causes of uncertainty the certainty of invasions and 
of home dissensions, — the women being converted and the husband 
perverted, or the reverse, — giving the children but the choice 
between a pagan and a Christian hell. No wonder they would not 
object to board in a convent painted for outsiders '■'-coiileiir de roseP 

d. But to what amounted this great effort at regeneration 
conceived by an intense will, and carried by a concourse of talent 
supported by a power as shall never again work together for the 
same cause ? It failed among the anguishes and monstrosities it had 
created. But no ; there is no failure wherefrom a progress issues. 
That is, we never pay too dear to learn, provided we profit by the 
lesson. 

The lesson was this : 

After three centuries of persecution, the young men whose 
family, oftenest their mothers, had suffered for the faith, seated 
Christianity on the throne, with carte blanche to apply their theories 
to society. Aware of the threatened reaction whose chief had 
been their own class-mate, now heir to the crown, they conceived 
that to make the revolution last, they needed to win the next genera- 
tion by a coup de 7nain which could be accomplished only by the 
enforcement of a "New Education." Such was the plan of Gre- 
goire, communistic in regard to the society, separatist in regard to 

(21) 



188 

the sexes, a peristyle to the new temple, ideal or Utopia, which Au- 
gustin describes as '^the city of God." 

This plan succeeded to withstand the hurricane raised by Jul- 
ianus, but left, ever since, among men the leaven of all discords, com- 
munism, and the seed of all cowardices, the habits and tendencies, or 
natural reactions of an unisexual education. It is a fact that the 
most monstrous criminals, and the most radical communists, as 
Savonarola and Chabot, had been educated and kept in convents, 
and that the grandes coqumes of modern history came out of con- 
ventual schools, guided by their "spiritual" directors, to the unlaw- 
ful conquest of the world. When the sexes are separated, the lesser 
peril is in their breaking through the fence, which, being a defence, 
is an invitation for the spirited young colts. — For our young oneSy 
when the impossible is the rule, they have but one alternative, 
hypocrisy or effrontery. 

e. Be praised this nation ! for not having yet surrendered its 
schools to this upas-like influence; for having demonstrated, in the 
exhibitions of Vienna, Philadelphia, and Paris, the doubted feasi- 
bility, the naturalness and morality, the advantages and power of 
co-education at all degrees and ages. But, say the enemies of co-edu- 
cation, do you want women to become masculine? Do not be afraid 
of that : the more educated, the more refined. Above diat question 
of form, we do not know what truly educated women (I mean better 
educated than we have been) will be capable of; never mind, they 
will tell. We can only imagine that, — as by adding one hundred 
millions of dollars to a previous capital of one hundred millions, a, 
bank can more than quadruple its operations, — by adding one 
hundred milHons of educated women to one hundred millions of 
educated men, this nation, which will soon be two hundred million 
strong, — will more than double its powers of civihzation, production, 
art, and happiness. 

Though the pretended " immorality" of free schools can never 
be so rotten as the " morality" of the isolating schools, the former 
is made the bug-bear. The American school, sure that it is right, 
exercises a silent vigilance on these matters ; acting on the principle 
that the less said the better, the less we make the children notice 
their difference, the less they feel it, and the later it becomes im- 
portune. Acting on this psychological plan, our public schools 
have educated the sexes just as they are made, side by side, and as 
they are designed to live in sincerity and purity, — notwithstanding 
the unfortunate exceptions who, succumbing to the temptations of 
liberty, would fall lower from the barriers of restraint. Besides, as 
long as Uncle Sam stands by his daughters and their babies, — instead 
of casting them away as others do, — the family, with its Republican 
superstructure, is safe. Accordingly, in the practice of our free- 
school system, under the apparent medley of girls and boys, order 



189 

rules, and vigilance is awake in our schools. There are different 
times and avenues for the entrance and exit, and a separate aisle 
in the school-rooms for each sex ; besides an imperceptible watch- 
ing from school to home, and other local precautions, which render 
the practice of this great principle, "co-education," as safe as wisdom 
can make anything, a model for other Nations. 

/. Co-education does not affect the curriculum of the physiolog- 
ical public school. In the primary departments, they are all children, 
equally needmg exercise, pure air, sun, training of their senses, voice, 
articulation, and winning intonations ; capacity for attention, de- 
duction, and induction, foresight. Both sexes must aquire a rich 
and ready dictionary, a pure, practical grammar, and the manual 
dexterity of expressing their sensible ideas graphically, plastically, 
constructively, even destructively when occasion requires. No 
more about the matters of instruction, only be sure that one educa- 
tional or drill excursion, if no more, will be made every week. 

g. I have touched, several times, the question of " timing" 
the exercises, never treated it in absolute terms, because, when it 
came out, it was about special schools ; and even for the common 
school itself, the " timing" somewhat depends on the season, the 
age of the pupils, the matters to be attended to. Therefore I will 
say, in the less binding terms, that the tuition of two hours or more 
now exacted from children during their growth, is ferociously anti- 
physiological ; that the half-hour rotary system of the " school for 
feeble-minded children" of Syracuse would not be too short if part 
of these 30 minutes were not employed in forming and breaking the 
groups. Therefore I am in favor of the 45 minutes' session of the 
£ci>k Modele of Brussels, invariably followed by 15 minutes of ab- 
solute recreation. But then, as there, every class-room must open 
on the '' preau," and be vacated in less than one minute. (That 
" preau" is covered, and serves as a play-ground when it rains, for 
gymnastics, choral singing, etc.) 



— 190 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Teacher. 

86. Sex of the Teachers, a. When the common education 
and the general training of the functions is over, young men go out 
of school to learn a trade, an art, or a liberal profession. Some 
girls do the same, but most of them remain, or must stay at home 
or at school, to learn the great art, which is to be their profession, 
of educating children. Therefore, if one sex needs more education 
(I do not say information) than the other, it is the woman; because, 
when he is buying, selling, manufacturing, etc., she will have to edu- 
cate her children, after having educated those of others. So, at least, 
the problem of "who ought to teach our children" is, or ought to 
be, viewed and worked out this side of the Atlantic. 

b. But this art is no more the simple affair it used to be, than 
our grandmother's spinning-wheel is adequate to make the thread 
needed to-day. The present management of children demands from 
women, besides the matters of the intellectual and physiological 
curriculum, an extensive knowledge of hygiene, and a limited but 
clear idea of the legislation, history, and philosophy of their sex, and 
of childhood. They ought to qualify on these points, but they do 
not even on the elements of practical pedagogy, as the value of 
attitudes, gestures, physiognomy, and voice, in teaching. I have 
been told that there is no such training for future teachers in a famed 
normal school. 

The same training may be imperfectly obtained, as it is in the 
municipal schools of Paris, by giving each teacher an assistant (just 
graduated). When the former speaks ex cathedra, the latter main- 
tains order, listens, and sees, is even ready to take the chair when it 
becomes unexpectedly vacant. However, acknowledging these fail- 
ings, and a few more to add to make the dozen, this is the second 
and higher glory of the American school, to have more female 
teachers than any other nation. 

New York City has above two thousand in the primary and 
grammar departments alone ; there are above one hundred thousand 
of them in the Republic. 



191 

c. Their Avork is the least remunerative, and the hardest by 
the expense of vitality it entails, and, worse than that, it has riveted 
upon them the evil eye of the enemy of free repubhcan schools. 
These scheming men make no mistake ; they know that, with de- 
luded women in their sleeves, they can cheat mankind as with 
trumped cards ; and that, with enlightened mothers and teachers, 
men can scorn the deceits of the supernaturalists. 

That is why everything that could render the position of teacher 
untenable for worthy women has been done ; from shortening, dis- 
puting, suspending their salary, to making their situation depend 
on the good-will (?) of these officials who, in New York for in- 
stance, are recognized several miles off by their mandibles when 
they come preying on the city treasury. Such are the satellites of 
the clericals, whose brutality is a mask for the perfidy of their leaders. 
So that he who threatens England with civil war, who presses on 
Belgium as a nightmare, whom divided France hates and obeys, 
who restores the inquisition and its schools in Spain, and destroys 
books m Canada as it did in Alexandria, is the same one who 
wants to take possession of our schools in the name of Liberty. 

d. To defend their countries, the Austrian, the Frenchman, 
the Prussian, the Russian keep under arms, in idleness, more than 
500,000 young men. To protect ours against its only enemy, bigoted 
ignorance, we must have an army of 500,000 girls teaching our 
children, in squads of twenty, and preparing themselves for the du- 
ties of motherhood — so much higher than those of paternity. Women 
— school and family educators — barriers against communism. Let us 
take heed. Guizot, Cousin, Villemain, and afterward Carnot, Duruy, 
and Jules Simon, Lried in vain to protect an admirable body of 
teachers from the same hatred embodied in de Falloux. Their pru- 
dence was set at naught, the best teachers France ever had were 
shot, transported, starved; and we have seen the first result, only 
the first. These are days of respite. — Let us reflect. 

When crossing the pathless forest of an Indiana bottom, or 
climbing some declivity in the Adirondacks, I have seen giant trees 
fall with a deep, sorrowful groan. It was not under the cumulative 
pressure of northwestern waves, nor from the shock of some 
noble animal ; they were honey-combed by imperceptible things 
without a name : Thus fall the Empires. 

Practically, the national army of teachers would be composed 
of almost all the girls who, having gone through the curriculum, 
must learn the management of children, and the accessories thereto, 
till they leave, on the call of their physiological functions. Cornelia, 
mother of the Gracchi, and Aurelia, mother of Augustus Caesar, had, 
been governesses of other women's children before their own sons 
were born. 

Those who feel a stronger attachment for the school remain at 



193 

their post, an invaluable old guard; — guardians, indeed, of the disci- 
pline, traditions, and honor of their calling. They form, with a certain 
number of learned professors, the staff whence are drawn the super- 
ior officers of the schools, like Marie Pape-Carpentier, Toussaint, of 
Paris, de Portugall, of Geneva, Mary West, of Illinois. Besides 
these ranks and staffs are the teachers of special matters, in constant 
or periodical attendance, those who train the children, in their ex- 
cursions, to form, on the ground, figures as those made of blocks, or 
by live-soldiers ; those who teach botany with plants, mineralogy 
with minerals, biology with fossils, anatomy with parts of the body, 
waiting for the squads of children in the garden-schools, or mu- 
seums ; without omitting the occasional teachers who, like Huxley and 
Proctor, cannot or must not pass through a country without leaving 
to the young the impression of their face, beside the exposition of 
their new idea : a provocation to live the life of thoughts. 

Soon, almost a million of women will be engaged in educating 

children. What an expense ! But how much more costly is it to 

feed twenty, forty millions without a mind educated, nor hands 
skilled to labor ? And what it costs to deprive the future generations 
of the progressive development which accrues from age to ages by 

the atavism of intellectuality The converse being true of im- 

becihty. 

e. And what a healthy feeling one experiences — wearing 
away his life to preach this solidarity in education, not only of all 
the men of one generation, but of all the generations to come. — 
The author of the Leitres Provinciales gave the same warning : " La 
suite des hommes doit etre coiisideree comme im mime homme qui sub- 
sis te toujour s et qui appreiid continuellementy For those who do 
not understand French : The successive generations of men ought 
to be considered as a single man, who ever lives, and learns inces- 
santly. Pascal, forgive me ! 



I9d 



CHAPTER IX. 

The School Director. 

87. But who will direct this army ? Without a general, it is but 
a crowd, and without a plan, what is a chief? 

a. The chief officer of the educational movement must be the 
person (without regard to sex) who joins to the best understanding 
of the psycho-physiological development of youth the clearer view 
of the tendencies of his country. His function would correspond 
exactly to those of " Grand Master of the University," with this dif- 
ference in the object: that the latter was chief keeper of immobiUty, 
and He will be the chief leader of the progressive movement. In 
this station, the best man of yesterday would likely be the worse to- 
morrow, because of the rapid changes our society undergoes at each 
generation. Another difference would result from the unprecedented 
vastness of his functions. The Amyot, Rollin, Monge, de Fontane, 
d'Hermopolis, Cousin, even Simon led only a part of one nation 
through the oscillations and vacillations which ended in ruin ; but 
the next master of the school will really be the leader of whole 
nations toward their highest or lowest destinies. This leader of edu- 
cation—supposing him to be environed by the best special advisors 
(like a national council of education), and represented at all the de- 
grees by persons of abilities and views akin to his own, — must be, 
above all, a physiologist, versed in social and economic sciences, 
arts, and literature. 

b. Long ago, a man who had to leave his country in order to 
be able to tell freely the truth, said : ^'■S'il est possible de perfection- 
7ier Vespece humaine^ test dans la medecine qii^il faiit en chercher les 
7noyensy This distant foresight of Descartes became a familiar 
thought of the apostles of education, and Miss Brackett said, some 
years ago, as in an unconscious soliloquy : "I sometimes think that 
if the medical and educational professions could be induced to work 
together, they might reform the world." The prophetess was right 
in so far, that the two professions will work together the needed ref- 
ormation when they will be represented in the same brain, at the 
head of the national education ; by Virchow in Prussia, Vulpian, 



194 

Broca, Paul Best, or Ranvier in France, etc. This Republic cannot 
rest her security on lesser men, and must tell to their like what 
Philip of Macedonia wrote to Aristoteles the moment Alexander 
was born : "Thou living : educated and instructed by thee, my son 
will be worthy of his father and of my power. 

And what will the homologue of this Archidtre of the ancients 
do for our modern society ? Let us see. 

88. The Scholar. — When the school will be taught by 
women, and controlled by physiologists, a child will not enter it like 
cattle the coral, being only counted in. 

a. In the perfect elasticity of his free existence, — if he has not 
been taught what he cannot perceive nor comprehend ; if the fair 
play of his senses and movements has been but imperceptibly 
watched and corrected; if his ear has become sensible to speech 
through its music, and to music through its melodies ; if his hand 
and foot are nimble and sure ; if his imagination has not been peo- 
pled v/ith monstrous images; if he is familiar with human sym- 
pathies, and ignbrant of the cowardly feelings caused by subjection 
and superstition, — his movements are gracious, his sensations 
expressed by an easy countenance, his plays have gradually become 
laborious, and from the early morning he works hard at something, 
till he falls asleep on the knees of his mother; — his voice tells as 
much by its intonations as by words ; though his vocabulary is not 
large, it is select, and is often enriched by nugget-like expressions ; 
his feelings towards his kin are intense, he having, from the first, 
learned to cry or to laugh when the bosom of his mother was agi- 
tated by sorrow or joy; and he is correct on the main points of 
right or wrong, having not experienced injustice; only for fear of 
doing wrong, he will sometimes do right to excess, as he loves, — 
then he is prepared for the school — the more so if he has passed 
through the kindergarten. 

If, on the contrary, he was compressed, imposed, deprived, re- 
fused the joys of his age, the more he needs the "New School" as 
an arbor of relaxation and expansion ; let both enter, let all come 
in, and receive them cheerfully. But do not touch these unknown 
quantities of vital activity, called children, before you have taken 
the bila7i of the forces of each; so that, what can be spent, and 
what must be spared of his vitality or caloricity during the com- 
bustive process of educational labor, might be measured as mathe- 
matically as the quantity of coal to run an engine. 

89. — Here begins the function of the physiological manager of 
the school, and of all the schools ; speaking for one, I mean all. — 
When receiving children and their health-record from the hand of 
the mother, he opens the balance-sheet of their capabilities, func- 
tions, and power of endurance. It may also devolve upon him to 
instruct the mothers (as he ought his teachers) in the art of observ- 



195 

ing and registering the vital functions of children : So many 
mothers being without real education, or kept in religious ignorance, 
or inveterate broadvvayers or boulevardieres. But his main duty 
and occupation will be to control and verify the observations of the 
mothers and teachers ; to deduce from them the consequences im- 
portant for the training and the future- of the pupils; and to furnish 
the general statistics of the country with the physiological elements 
of the local statistics nascent under his control. 

After filling up the usual questioning about famaly traits and like- 
nesses, pre-natal or infancy circumstances and accidents, etc., coming 
to the present status, he considers : 

The complexion. 

The age, size, and weight, separately and comparatively. 

The general dimensions compared to those of the head, chest, 
and limbs. 

The abnormal development of the head compared to that of 
the face. 

The differences of the two sides of head, body, and limbs. 

The muscular power at large; do. localized and tested by 
dynamometers, and its difference on both sides. 

The firmness of standing, and rectitude of the diverse modes 
of locomotion. 

The "qualities" of the blood, tested by globulimetry, colori- 
metry, chemical and microscopic analysis. 

The "movements" of the blood, timed and written with the 
sphymograph at the heart, the two wrists, and the two temporal ar- 
teries, if need be. 

The number and graphic forms of the breathing in repose and 
after exercises. 

The general temparature. 

Do. compared to the local, and particularly to that of the ex- 
tremities. 

The temperature at the two temples, before and after intellect- 
ual labor. 

The excess of sugar, albumen, and urea from the blood to be 
tested. 

The condition of the senses (and of the sensations) to be 
thoroughly investigated ; mainly that of the audition, which determ- 
ines the distance from the teacher ; and of the vision, whose power 
of accomodation tells what types the child must read, at what dis- 
tance from the light and demonstrations he must stand. 

The faculty of expressing ideas by language, drawing, or plastic 
forms ; taste for music, numbers, mechanics, travels ; for active or 
sedentary occupations, for sunny or dark places. 

His memory, and of what kind; of words, facts, dates, ideas, 
which ? be precise. 



196 

His temper, sociability, joviality or the reverse; thirst and 
appetite, influence of food or of delay in feeding. 

His previous education, and what he gained by it. 

Some of these points are accounted for normes at once, others 
after having been verified; of others, the 7iorme is taken from the 
average of several observations, like that of the individual pulse- 
beat, or of the breathing. Others have to be repeated periodically, 
as every month for the weight, and every three months for the com- 
parison of weight to height; since, if a child lose weight, or become 
taller and not heavier, or even lighter (in the ordinary period of 
growth), It is due to a cause which must be found. In the food, 
the condition of the appetite and mucous membrane will tell; in 
over-work, the eyes, the heat at the base of the brain will show, 
etc. In headache from crowded dormitories and school-rooms, 
paleness; in all, a specific disturbance of caloricity. Other observ- 
ations have to be repeated in proportion as the deviation of the 
norine is more marked, as when the blood is very poor in coloring 
matter ; others, like the temperature, require a constant watching, 
at least by the mother and teacher [see "Manual of Thermometry 
for Mothers, Teachers, Nurses, etc."), besides the control of the 
Keeper of the vital forces. 

In time of epidemics, the temperature is to be watched more 
closely, because, a few days before the appearance of an eruptive 
and contagious disease, a raise of at least i° C. above the previous 
temperature of the child indicates the danger for his fellows from 
contact, and for him from exposures. The same test by the 
thermometer cannot be dispensed with in the very frequent cases 
of children simulating a disease — which a normal temperature will 
deny, — or dissimulating a disease — whose abnormal temperatures af- 
ford the demonstration, — the lies of children notwithstanding. 

Therefore, not content with having ascertained the condition 
of the children at the beginning of each course, the "Keeper of the 
ledger of the vital forces" must continue to record the vital signs, be- 
ing particularly vigilant about those whose series look suspicious, and 
draw from their prognostical reading the resolves which form the 
physiological government of the school ; ordering : the prevalence 
or diminution of labor of one or more kinds ; increase of one sens- 
ory training, suppression of another ; more plastic or drawing 
occupations, oftener to the garden-schools, vocal instead of silent 
studies, aeration, insolation, or the reverse ; recommending : tem- 
porary removal from school ; advisi/ig : different or better food, 
distraction, change of climate, temporarily or for life. 

In this report, when I said that the school is wherever we can 
learn something, I was the narrow-minded pupil of my former 
masters. 

Do we not see clearly now that the school is wherever we can 
also improve our health, which is power ? 



197 ■ 

When through Europe, m quest of better schools, I could not 
look without envy at their gardens of acclimatization for plants and 
animals; and I could not help thinking that if we treated our 
sickly children as they do the eucalyptus and the zebra, how many 
precious lives could be spared ; besides drying up for our posterity 
the germ of hideous, cavernous consumption. That is what cer- 
tainly will do the first Keeper of the vital forces of the nation in 
organizing gardens of human acclimatization in Georgia, on the 
table-lands of the Cumberland mountains, etc. We must not over- 
look the more general fact that, in husbanding the nervous, muscu- 
lar, and intellectual forces of our children by this psycho -physio- 
logical mathematism, none of these forces will be let run to waste, 
but the children will have enough of it to spend in labor, in growth, 
in necessary repairs of their organism, besides more in store to spare 
for an emergency like sickness, etc. This is the individual view of 
the question ; but, socially considered, not only these latent forces 
will be kept, but, being mathematically recorded, will be entered in 
the statistics of the nation, who, being made mcessandy conscious, 
by these reports, of her muscular and neurotic powers, as vvell as of 
the capacities and capabilities of her children, will, at any time, know 
what of her destinies she can accomplish with her forces at com- 
mand, or which to postpone till she has developed her latent forces 
by a system of education directly calculated to prepare to-day the 
men needed to-morrow. When Cousin sounded the alarm at the 
sight of the small products of the French school, he would have 
been listened to if comprehended, and comprehended if he could 
have vested his warning in the language of physiological mathemat- 
ism, and said : 

Since X years, per globulimetry, the average French blood has 
lost so many red corpuscles. 

Per sphygmography, the same blood shows more abnormal in- 
termittance. 

Per thermometry, the elevation of temperature after labor is 
higher than it used to be, showing less capacity of retention of calor. 

Per spyrometry, the chest of the Frenchman expands less than 
the German by X ctm., causing a proportionate loss of oxygenation 
and X more frequent breathings. 

Per ophthalmoscopy, so many more cases of myopia. 

Per dynamoemtry, the contractibility of the muscles has lost X 
kilgr. of its power, etc. 

That is the report the French needed in 1840 in order to avoid 
1870 ; and the more free is a nation, the more it needs such warn- 
ing in order to educate in itself the functions, in man the man. 



198 



CHAPTER X. 

Conclusions. 

When seeing, in the international exhibitions, in many schools ; 
and in the press, the immense efforts made, and the treasures spent 
by nations, partisans, and sects to take possession of the child, even to 
influence the impressions of the mother before he is born, one can- 
not fail to reflect upon the nature and aim of education. 

Education is the right of every child, the duty of every parent, 
the bond of the community. The feeling which binds those edu- 
cated together — more subtle than electricity— is nationality. The 
right of a society upon the allegiance of a child rests upon his hav- 
ing received a national education (the other advantages accruing 
from the social contact, being unintentional toward the person, are 
not binding). Moreover, if the family and state do not educate, 
the foreigner— by his feeling, at least, — will ; and shall make strangers 
of our offsprmg. Any one so estranged by a moral kidnapping who 
dare act the citizen, is worse than Benedict Arnold, born an English i 
subject, and traitor only to a nation whose nationality was not yet! 
generally acknowledged. But now this Republic is not only ai 
nation, it is a parent who spends, to educate its children, more than 
any other five nations put together. Whence the touchmg confi- 
dence of the W^estern boy singing, " Uncle Sam is rich enough to 
give us all a farm." Education is that fruitful farm, and Uncle Sam, 
giving it, asks no other quesdon but this to himself, " how can I give 
the best ?" 

That is the conclusion this report tends to. 

Resmne. — We have said that the object of education is to pre- 
pare the children for the work which will be demanded of them as 
men. The general drift of the wants differs at each generation, be- 
sides, the work is so varied in its details that they cannot be em- 
braced in a plan of general training and education. This is the rea- 
son why, transferring our observation from the objective to the 
subjective, we have demonstrated that if the commonwealth can- 
not pre-educate in all kinds of work, it can, for all kinds of work: 
[a) train all the organs to accompHsh their functions in the most 



199 

jDhysiological manner; (/') elevate all the functions which are under 
;he control of consciousness to the rank of nitellectual capacities, 
md make them concur in the operations of the mind and of the 
wiW : that is what we call Physiological Education. 

We have been at some pains to gather its elements from the 
special schools for idiots, for the deaf-mutes, from the kindergartens, 
md from the worst and best popular schools, and to compare them 
10 the specimens of art and industry periodically exhibited, in order 
to prove what relations exist between the training and the working. 

Their parallelism, at least, is manifest : The best educated 
inations produce the best work. Where the aristocracy alone is edu- 
cated, there are a few works of magnitude, and little of private indus- 
itry ; (Russia, Valachia, Roumania). Where money does everything, 
Imanufactures and automatic products are abundant and cheap, and 
the people attached to the machines are very low in education; 
(England), where, however, immense progress has been made, since 
1873, under the mental leadership of Gladstone, Mill, Spencer,Carlyle, 
and Huxley. More variety of products is the result of more varied 
instruction in the working classes of Belgium and France ; but there 
the enemy of progress holds the fort against its aposdes and martyrs. 
'The industrial prosperity of Switzerland and Holland is at par with 
their general education ; and even between China and Japan, the 
superiority of arts and manufactures is on the side of the latter, 
which has the better schools. If this inter-dependence is not illusory, 
it was no lost time to search through these exhibitions for the prod- 
ucts, and through so many schools for the schooling, in order to 
set up this truth beyond cavil as our beacon. With it, if we survey 
our country as we have done others, we find that in unfettered 
America more work, and, sometimes, better work has been done in 
this Republic than in Europe during the last thirty years, but that 
the disintegrating elements of civil society have done and prepared 
its dissolution with more effrontery — in the name of liberty — than 
anywhere else. 

Here, the million has three blessings : free land, free institutions, 
and free schools ; which are paralyzed by three scourges : ist. The 
monopoly of the best lands exacting crushing rent for it before any 
work can be done on it. 2d. The corruption of legislatures — 
unsurpassed by any female prostitution — which give the form of law 
to instruments of spoliation of the laborers by capitalists, whose 
capital IS their impudence astride of our deposits. 3d. The com- 
munities which take in their schools our citizen-children, and turn 
them subjects of the papacy, itself a tool of the Jesuits' scheme of 
universal communism. 

Against these odds, the working people, which, after all, is the 
nation, if not the society, feeds that society with its unproductive 
appendage of army, navy, office-holders and seekers, money and 



200 

paper operators, defalcators, and all sorts of malefactors, fashionable 
or the reverse. 

Under this immense pressure, the American people have worked, 
not only to satiate these insatiable classes, to satisfy its own wants, 
and to keep the balance of trade in its favor, but to make inven- 
tions and discoveries which have affected the economy of other na- 
tions. Indeed, in arts and sciences, the American stands high ; in 
mechanism, engineering, architecture, higher ; and amidst this hard- 
earned prosperity, one thing only is amiss : it is the finishing touch, 
which can be acquired by tradition — which we have not ; or by 
training-schools, which we must have. True, the latter will not give, 
at once, the thoroughness of the former, but it is not necessary that 
it should, since the training being more physiological, and the tra- 
dition more routhiiere, the former will develop an originality of its 
own, which, under the name of Americanism, is already acknowl- 
edged on all the markets as soon as it asserts itself, as in sewing 
machines, cars, commercial and railroad architecture, etc. 

It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that our popular 
schools cease to be copies (even improved copies) of the clerical or 
classical schools of the old world : to every one his task, to every one 
his school. 

Our task, the task of tlie American people, is traced by its 
origin and progress. Started from the rough shores of the east in 
quest of freedom, it has conquered, besides, with the plow and anvil, 
the thickness of a continent, and stands on the western shore a pro- 
ducer and trader ready for an honest bargain. 

In this situation, the nation — minus a scant minority which may 
be called an ornament if small enough, an ulcer if large — must be,, 
and, so far, has been, in the main, engaged in works of production. 
But we must not shut our eyes, as some do when they fall, to the 
fact that the number of those who shun labor and live on specula- 
tion increases out of healthy proportion with that of those who> 
have to feed them. This economical question has something to do 
with ours, in so far that the common school must be the last place 
to breed such costly animals. 

Looking not only at the present and local interest of this con- 
tinent, we see that we have almost at our mercy Europe, now 
hungry for bread, meat, and cotton ; soon for our coal, wines, 
and many manufactures. But, looking at a near future, several parts 
of Asia, some larger than Europe, will need to be fed and supplied 
with our goods, whilst it will not take twenty years to open the 
richest of the continents, called dark because it is the brightest, to 
the ideas and trade of all nations. Will the Americans be ready,, 
not only to plant their commerce and influence on the Niger and 
Congo, but their ideas, and to establish, there, hygienic colonies, 
where those threatened with extinction of their race by tubercle 



201 

will see it colored and enriched by the mightiest of physicians, 
whose face is the sun ? In the next civilization, Europe, with its 
petty divisions, used-up soil and sickly productions, will fall back to 
the insignificance from which it had been awakened by the rap of 
the verge of the Roman Lictor. The civilizing groups will be con- 
tinental instead of provincial or national, and this continent must be, 
in its turn, the guiding star. 

Now, the hand upon the heart, who is prepared to affirm that 
the education which has made the Europe we see, can make the 
America we foresee .? 

There never was a people so master, and conscious altogether, of 
its own destinies, as the American people (excepting, perhaps, the 
Roman) ; therefore, none who needed more to educate its own flesh, 
bones, and sinews to obey its own will, and to bear its synergies 
toward this future. AnyJ3ody conscious of this ideal ceases to see 
education by any other light ; that is the criterium. 

With it as a guide, we see what the American school must be. 
Beginning and ending in the folds of woman's affection and tact, 
education takes the child from her lap to the kindergarten, thence to 
the physiological school. There, all to be trained in the use of 
their senses, in order to treasure, without distortion, the cosmos in 
their microcosm. There, again, all to be trained in the use of their 
.hands, to create from the world of ideals, their concepts of what it is 
good for them to do as their part of the co-operative improvements 
of our society and planet. Thence to direct apprenticeship, or to 
special schools of art, of technology, etc. ; thence to the wide world, 
in the climate and with the mate who suits them best, and promises 
children better than they are themselves. 

But I may be mistaken. The teaching of womanly functions 
to women, of manly functions to men, of working capacities to a 
nation of producers, of the solidarity of all of us for, by, and in 
labor to elevate our mind, our family, and our national destinies, may 
be all wrong : utopiae. There is another plan. Cause the children 
to know as little as possible about ideals convertible in plans, powers 
and possibilities of improving their condition. As for your own, 
cause the darling to learn as much of the dead and foreign lan- 
guages as not to be able to purely speak his mother tongue ; to be 
smart enough to appear intelligent; to restrict his mathematics to 
the varied applications of the golden rule : four and four make three 
for me and live for himself; give him a little polish besides, and when 
the down appears on his upper lip, you can send him, say, to . - - - 
Rome. He gets acquainted with nice fellows, who know where 
representative B. lies drunk, in want of so many thousand sesterces 
to pass a bill which \vill save the country. Thence to Poppee, less 
dressed than her statues or her dog, which winks at him, — a favor 
which insures him the privilege of coming again, by the small door. 



203 

at the small hours. When she — sooner the dog — is tired of him, she 
gives hull princely jewels, and a chart — voted by the senators who 
take their voting-peas from her chiseled dressing-box — which 
exiles him in a district of . . . .say Judea, with the power to levy mil- 
lions on his countrymen, and the mental obligation to betray them 
in their life or death-struggle. Such was young Josephus, as he 
describes himself, just out of a select school. Do not forget it, 
Josephus was educated in the sect of the Pharisees, the Jesuits of 
his time. 

I am willing to acknowledge that all the boarders of these 
select 'schools do not profit so much as he did by the lessons of the 
bon peres. Most of them, unpromising brothers or sisters — all com- 
mon — stop half-way to the bit of arithmetic quoted above, buying, 
selling what they have not, in their spider-shops, or in the webs they 
spin across the street, or in the sacristy (Brussels, Cincinnati). They 
are millionaires, that is, they operate on millions. If they fail, it 
ruins thousands of families. Hush ! they give such fine matinees, or 
he is an archbishop, a temperance preacher, a leader of the Paul- 
ist brothers^ etc. 

But the crash does not come, necessarily, from the street or bank. 
The inside, too, has its weak points. The spine is stricken by the 
thunderbolt of news, the brain by the tension of forming and 
watching combinations, the sympathetic by the mobility of the 
hopes and fears, whence locomotor ataxy, sclerosis, delirium des 
grandeurs, melancholy, general paralysis, etc. For the alleviation 
of such chastisement, about two hundred of the culprits call daily to 
physicians in the city of New York alone. They experience too 
late that it is harder for the spine (arbor vitae) to be stricken by a 
fall of J/io of a centime on stock, than to fell fifty good-sized oaks. 
Beside these conspicuous figures, how many more have left the 
shop, the counter, the desk, to operate on fantastic capitals, on fan- 
tastic deposits, gulling dupes till they are waited upon by deUrium 
tremens or the jailer. 

It is no mystery that the plurality of the cases of mental 
alienation entertained in sumptuous palaces — once caused by the 
substitution of bigotry to religion — are due to the constantly in- 
creasing substitution of gambling to working, a substitution rendered 
almost unavoidable by the want of education of the working 
aptitudes. 

Two things retard yet the advent of this true education. One 
is the low estimate of labor by those who profit by it, and conta- 
giously by those who do it. The other is the opposition of the super- 
naturalists, who know that their system of education by imposition 
is their last ditch. 

It is a miserable fact that public opinion is not prepared to 
honor plain laborers as it once honored warriors, courtiers, and 



203 

honors to-day landlords, and speculators when successful. How- 
ever, our feelings in that respect come every day nearer those of a 
peasant of Gascony who, seeing the approach of the coach of a 
nobleman noted for his legal robberies of the villagers, hastened near 
the road, and, bowing almost to the sod, held the head of his son 
lower, saying : " C 'est le grand voulour.'" ( Voleur, thief.) That is the 
transition between rendering yet homage to those who once de- 
served it, and to those whence come now the national honor and 
prosperity. 

Nothing can hasten this change more surely than the applica- 
tion of the principles of physiology to the successive periods of 
education. But nothing will be opposed more desperately than this 
movement, — not only by those who, Hving upon the booty accru- 
ing from previous arrangements, answer with mjuries and bullets 
to reason, call names those who philosophically propose more loyal 
arrangements, as Spencer, Mill, Carlyle, Lewis, Bright, Huxley, and 
would have strangled Hercules in his crib if they knew that he 
would canalize the Alpheus to carry away their filth. But their 
madness, being from the pocket, bears only indirectly against a 
natural education, which they dread by instinct. They will die^ 
and their children invariably make concessions. But what of those 
who have no children, who never die, and whose hold on society 
rests upon their inoculation, to the tender age, of doctrines destruct- 
ive of individual liberty, of family delicacies, of the joys of society^ 
and of the vigor of nations ? They claim authority over man even 
before he is born (baptizing in utero, etc.) They allow no man,, 
child, or infant, to think, say, read, or do anything which they have 
not explicitly permitted or approved. They wrench from women 
the details of the most intimate relations, making marriage a trilogy. 
They forbid social pleasures, or restrict them to the depraved excite- 
ments of the autos-da-fe and bull fights ; they anaethesy the moral 
sense of the nations they Hve upon, as Ireland, Poland, part of 
France, etc. 

Those they cannot beguile, they try to intimidate, — besides 
having a hand in the plots tending to their destruction. They 
threaten, as I have said previously, to pulverize society if it does 
not surrender the children to them — too amiable minotaurs. Their 
threat must be read to be believed. I quote from the last: "Modern 
society is a usurper of the rights and sovereignty of the Vicar of 
Christ. — Pure right exists only in the Vicar of Christ. — The Catho- 
lic church of Europe has been weakened and wounded, it may be 
unto death. — Secular education is taking the place of ecclesiastical 
education, which bodes ill for the church, and still worse for the 

state. — An unseen power is everywhere at work (meaning the 

secret work of the Jesuits, Dominicans, etc., combined ; though 
telling the reverse.) There is an abyss opening before civil 



204 

society, into which thrones, and laws, and rights, and liberties, may 
sink together. Civilization has to choose between the Revolution 
and the Church of God." (The Catholic Church and Modern 
Society, Manning, Feb., 1880.) 

Civilization has not to choose, it has chosen already. It scorns 
the insolent, reiterated menaces, the splendidly written declaration 
of war, backed by the most powerful army of secret societies and 
of open legions which communism ever arrayed against social order 
and progress. 

And why this confidence in the greatest danger ? . Because 

the would-be minister of Christ who fulminated it, did not dare to 
name Jesus in an appeal to force and perfidy. The American 
people will no more than the European nations accept the educa- 
tional services of the Roman Church. 

These services will be firmly declined, for the reasons reiterated 
during the last three hundred years, and for a few more, of which 
we will consider only those bearing on education. 

1. The teaching of the church rests its foundation on super- 
naturalism. "The Catholic church is the society of man in the 
supernatural order" (Manning); therefore it cannot educate our 
children for the society in which they will live, which is : "A ciril 
and political society of the natural order." (Manning.) 

2. The Roman church cannot be trusted to teach, because it 
has persecuted and put to death the best teachers, burned and 
otherwise suppressed their books, and kept from its charges, as long 
as possible, the newly discovered laws of the universe, which are 
God's laws ; that is one of the atheisms of the pagan church of 
Rome. 

3. Again, on this last score, it cannot be trusted, because, in- 
stead of teaching a God unique as Moses did, or trinal as Plato, 
Paul, Jamblicus, it has dished, for children and childish people, a 
theogony which descends from Mary, symbol of a worthy mother, to 
Jose. - . -the husband as the priests want them. 

4. Because its teachers substitute for the laws of physical and 
physiological order, — which are God's laws, — the revolutionary proc- 
ess of miracles in human affairs, and in sciences, etc., because they 
represent God as stultifying himself by breaking his own laws at 
their bidding or begging, and continue to make miracles, though it 
is notorious that their supernatural cures of Lourdes, etc., are 
made, as well as those of the Salpetriere, by means of the natural 
order. 

5. Because they begin education by teaching children what 
they cannot understand; preparing their head for the Thomist 
article of faith : credo quia absurdam^ as the squaw manipulates the 
skull of her pappoose to hasten its ossification and a better resistance 
to the tomahawk. 



205 

6. They cannot teach languages, unless, possibly, the dead 
ones, because they group the words by analogy of sounds instead 
of ideas ; the ideologic method giving too free scope to free 
thinking. 

7. They cannot teach astronomy, geology, geography, with- 
out giving the lie to the judgments pronounced ex cathedra against 
the discoveries which have renovated these sciences. 

8. They cannot teach biology, which defeats their mythology ; 
anatomy, which they have especially excommunicated ; physiology, 
their dread and '•^bete noire.'''' They cannot open their mouth about 
history, which shows them destroying the old society to establish 
such a communism as the barbarians themselves could not withstand. 
They cannot tell the history of the reopening of the East, by Marco 
Polo, — "Z^z porte oiiverte,'' says one of my old books, — because, by 
their extortions, conspiracies, dissensions, they forced the shutting of 
that door in the face of the Europeans for almost six centuries; 
retarding, by that much, the reciprocal fecundation of the minds of 
both hemispheres, etc. 

9. They cannot be trusted to train the imagination of chil- 
dren, their own being disordered one way or the other by the uni- 
sexuahty of their education, that is: either reduced to nihil, or 
peopled with extravagant or monstrous ideals. 

10. Unsafe trustees, too, in sentimental matters. Those edu- 
cated by them, having had but supernatural types, do not know where 
to stop in the natural order. One passes from the adoration of the 
Virgin to coarse realities; and the other, having kept company with 
the archangel Gabriel, accepts the man who brings her the biggest 
dowry. 

11. They cannot be chosen as models of literature and poetry, 
their works being too heavy, as Father Kirsher's, the worthy Bollan- 
dist's, etc., or too light, as those of the Abbe Chaulieu ; their light 
literature, consisting of over eleven hundred erotics, produced by 
some four hundred priests, headed by the De Amor is Re medio of 
Pope Pio XL: a whole library of gaillardises written by a cohort of 
Gaillards of whom the French would say : J^e ne leur conjierais pas 
ma fille. 

12. The French may be right or wrong; but above what he 
calls pkhe mignon and the Monsignore peccadillo, there are rehibit- 
ory causes for not trusting in our schools, corporations which keep 
celibacy, but not always chastity. 

As this is one of their favorite weapons against their opponents, 
I will say no more than to advise to consult the personal notes of 
the Secretary of Public Instruction, and the minutes of the Secre- 
tary of Justice in France, Belgium, and other countries, before al- 
lowing the teachers "of a supernatural order" to develop their 
unnatural propensities in our schools "of a natural order." 



206 

I did not expect nor desire to close this report by a reiteration 
of my former warnings. But since the reiteration of former threat- 
enings has made it opportune, I will add a word more. It is about 
the adroit efforts made by the only dangerous communists to obscure 
the differences which are essential between communism and social- 
ism ; one striving to annihilate individuality, the other to ascertain 
and develop it in all its modalities, by social improvements. Com- 
munism is what Manning aims at without naming it. Socialism is 
what he insults. In essence, socialism is the ensemble of the social 
questions which rise from time to time, and are in turn studied by 
Quesnay, Vico, Comte, Enfantin, Spencer, Mill, here by Madam 
Howe, etc., previous to being discussed, accepted, or rejected by 
the public, which is not 2^ pec us ^ as soxnQ pastors would have it. 

However, these apparent digressions were not all loss to our sub- 
ject, since, precising what we do not want, they have, by elimmation, 
almost defined what we need. 

We need a system of education commensurate to our destinies. 
We have landed here at different dates of modern history, c©rre- 
sponding to the sufferings of Europe, to escape either hunger, serf- 
dom, excommunication, supplices or princely and priestly slaughters 
en masse; and we succeeded so far as to be able to foresee that at 
each generation our children will be freer and happier than ourselves. 

We see that this freedom and happiness rests entirely on the 
education we will give them. 

Considering humanity, our education will teach, by principles 
and examples, the co-ordination and inter-dependence of what a 
child learns, with what he will have to do as a man, and of what he 
executes with what others need ; that is not communality, but 
solidarity of every one in the social movement and order. 

Considering society, we want education to be given as advance 
money on the social contract which binds every one to work in 
view of the public good, beside for the direct advantage of self 
and family. 

Considering education as a national and scientific affair, it 
must give a mathematical account of the growth and physiological 
development of each child and group of children, to render possible 
an annual bilan of the vital forces of the nation. 

Considering our geographical posidon, and consequent moral 
attitude between the orient and Occident, the vastnessof our milieu, 
our educadon must be concentric and homogeneous, humane yet 
national, and, above all, familiale. With the unity of our conti- 
nent, of unbroken skies from east to west, of air, source of the 
pneuma, from west to east, of means of locomotion everywhere, 
and of language for the incessant exchange of our animus, the most 
universal, bi-sexual, therefore natural education is needed, woman 
the natural teacher of the free American. 



207 

This is not all that I have to say on physiological education. 

Its first materials were gathered before 1839, and six fragments 
of it were published before 1846. At this date appeared ^'' The Edu- 
cation of Idiots,'' the last words of which are (page 729) : "Here I 
deposit the material for a fuethod of physiological education appli- 
cable to all children. ... It remains only to write it " 

This piece of youthful confidence was written by the cradle of 
my son, my wife sewing under the same light, strengthening the 
thread of my ideas, in the more retired of the two rooms where 
Horace Mann and George Sumner had come, three years before, to 
confer on the application of this method for the improvement of 
idiots in America, — eight years before the oeuvre of Froebel was 
called Kindergarten, 

I was to write this method to help us in educating our son — her 
son mainly by the character, — and now, after thirty -four years, I am 
hardly able to give an oudine of it, interrupted by the current of 
the detritus of other thoughts and duties ; so that my son has grown 
to be capable of being my master in many things — if I was not too 
old to learn, — and for fear I will not have the time to write 
that so long dreamed-of method, I dedicate its imperfect and inci- 
dental expression to my grand-children, Edward, John, and Jeanettc 
Seguin, to be applied by their mother, who is their teacher. 

New York, 41 W. 20th St., February 15, 1880. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

INFANT EDUCATION. 

Chapter I, 

THE CRADLE AND THE CRECHE. 

Page 

1. Introduction -----..- 3 

2 . The cradle .---.... 4 
Pre-natal impressions - - - -- - -5 

3 . The creche -------- 9 

Chapter II. 

THE SALLE D'ASYLE. 

4. Mothers as teachers ----..- 10 

5. Salle d'asyle described ---.-- H 

6. Motors of infants ---.--. 12 

Chapter III. 

THE KINDERGARTEN. 

7 Practical and ideal .._--- -16 

8. Historic - - - - - - - - 18 

9. Method --------- 19 

10. Training -.-.---- 20 

Chapter IV. 
physiological infant school. 

11. Origin and basis - - - - - - - 25 

12. Physiological considerations - - - - - 26 

13. Training - - - - - - - - 27 

Of. h. c. Its physiological theory ----- 29 

d. Muscular training - - - - - - - 31 

14. Symmetrical training - - - - - - 31 

15. Application to education - - - - - - 33 



JIO 



Chaptfr v. 
of the senses. 

Page 

16. Of sensation ........ 'S6 

17. Object lessons - - - - - - - 37 

At the Vienna Exhibition - - - - - - 38 

Toys - - - - - - - - 40 

In the Infant School - - - - - - - 41 

Training of the senses ----.. 43 



PART II. 
EDUCATION OF THE DEAF-MUTES. 

Introduction --.-.-.- 44 

18 . The schools - - - - - - - .44 

Origin ---._.-.. 54 

Chapter I. 

THE HOLLAND-GERMAN SCHOOL. 

19. History— Hill, Hirsch, Janke, Saegert - > - - 47 

20. Schools of Speech — Zurich, Vienna, Breslau, Koenigsberg, Liegnitz, 

Aix-la-Chapelle, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam - . . 48 

21. Success of the method ... - ... 49 

22. Collective teaching ------- 50 

23. Conclusions -.-.-... 51 

Chapter II. 

THE SPANISH-FRENCH SCHOOL. 

24. History from Pierre Ponce de Leon to Hernandez and Don Lopez - 53 
From Pereire to de I'Epee ------ 54 

25. Pereire's method - - - - - - - 56 

Voice communicated by its vibrations - - - - 57 

26. Report of Buffon to the Academy of the Sciences (1749 j - - 58 

Chapter III. 
l'abbe de l'epee and his time. 

27. Historic .--.----- 60 
His only book .--.... 62 
•Which of the two is the French school ? . ... 63 
Itard tries to revive it ------ 65 



211 

Chapter IV. 

ANGLO-AMERICAN SCHOOL. 

Page 

28. Historic - - - ...... 67 

School of Northampton .-..-. 68 

29 . Visible speech - ' - - - - . - - 69 
School of Jacksonville ------ 70 

30. German method - - - - - - - 71 

Tactile method .--..-. 74 

31 . Comparison - . . - . ... 76 

Italian schools .... ... 77 

English schools - - . - . . - - 78 

Congress of English teachers - - . - - 79 

Miss Hull's Memoir .... ... 80 

Natural method of speech - - . - - . 82 



PART III. 

EDUCATION OF IDIOTS. 

Chapter I. 

FOREIGN SCHOOLS FOR IDIOTS. 

Origin. Sauvage de 1' Aveyron - . . . . - 84 

German schools — Liegnitz, Crashnitz, Gladbach - - - 85 

Belgian and Dutch schools — Gheel, Ghent, the Hague - - 87 

French schools for idiots .... - - 89 

Bicetre ----....- 89 

La Salpetriere ..... - - 90 

English schools --.-.-.. 92 

Eastern Counties— Asylums - . - - - 92 

Earls wood school ....... 92 

Modus docendi ..... . - 93 

Lancaster school ....... 95 

Normanfield school .-....- 96 

Larberg (Scotch) Institution - - - . - - - 97 

Darent (near London) Institution ----,- 97 

Plans of the Charity Organization Committee - - - - 98 

Swiss cretins - - .... 98 

ItaHan cretins -.--.... 100 

Chapter II. 

AMERICAN SCHOOLS FOR IDIOTS. 

Barre school ...-...- 101 

New York State Institution . - - - - 102 

Pennsylvania State Training School . . - . - 103 

Ohio State Training School - - .... 104 

Some points of the training of idiots ..... 104 

Entrainement -,_--.. 105 



212 — 

Page 

By hand drills - 106 

lUus" rated by a case --.._. 107 

a. By playthings --__-.. 108 

b. By music -.--..- 108 
e. By sight - - - - - - - - 109 

d. Must idiots be amused ? - - - - - HO 

51 . Conclusions -.-..._. m 



PART IV. 

POPULAR EDUCATION AS IT IS AND AS IT 
SHOULD BE. 

Chapter I. 

THE COMMON SCHOOL AS I HAVE FOUND IT. 

52 . Recent origin of the common school - - - - - 

53. English popular education - - - - - 

54. Swedish school ....... 

55. Swiss school ..._-.. 

56. Italian schools ---..-.. 

57 . Portuguese schools .-----. 

58. Austrian schools ....... 

59. German school ....... 

Warnings of Cuvier and Cousins . . . . - 

60. Dutch and Belgian schools . - . . . 

61 . Popular education -..--.. 
a. Progress and reaction - 
h. School material ....... 

c. Methods of teaching - - - - - - 

d. Unhealthy stimulation - - - - - - 

e. Unions Scolaires ...... 

/. Teachers' salaries .... - . 

g . French delegates to the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia 

62. American popular education ..... 

63. Criterium ....... 

a. School-houses and rooms . . _ _ . 

h. School furniture ...... 



c. 



School exhibits 



d . Role of the critic ..... 

Chapter II. 

THE COMMON SCHOOL AS IT SHOULD BE. 

64. Specifications: a. Position, how built 

b. Furniture ------ 

c . Class-room airy arrangement 

d. Relative positions of teacher and pupils 

e. Teaching apphances .... 

/. Material and moral order . . . . 

g. Lancaster school's device 



213 



Sch )ol books. 



American 



1 JOl UOOK.b. U. n.Jin_n<-tin 

Accomodaung the type of the books to the power of the eye 
Accomodating the subject matter of the book to their compre- 
hension - ----""■ 
History distorted ---■'' 
Thinkers who have read little - - - ■ " 
Why books are necessary in the school - - ^ 
Present school-means insufficient - - - - - 
The school to be enlarged . - - - - 

Chapter III. 



Page 

128 

128 
129 
130 
130 
131 
131 



GARDEN SCHOOLS. 

a. Growth of the idea - - - 

b. Axioms of physiological education - - - - 

c . Life of ideas ------ 

d. First garden-schools ------ 

e. Jardin des Plantes ------ 

/. Popular gardens ------ 

g. Park of Montsouri ------ 

h. The Pincio ------- 

i. From gardens to museums - - - - 

j. The Kensington and Sydenham - - - - 

k. The teachings of sights - - 

I. The parks as means of education . . - - 

m. Precedents justifying their use as such 

In New York, public grounds arranged as teaching and play-grounds 

a . The Central Park ...--- 

b. c. d. And others, their local destination and arrangement 
The Battery, historical grounds . . - - 
a. b. c. Parks of Philadelphia, Cincinnati, etc. 

Village garden-schools and museums - - - . - 

What to learn on the ground . - - - - 

Geography, orientation ------ 

Mensuration ------- 

Chapter VI. 

THE metric system. 

a. b. c. Opposition to it by the automatons 

d. e. International quantitative language 

/. Taught through the senses - - - - - 

g. Dimension, proportion, etc. - - 

i j. Decimal numeration, metric calculation 
k. Natural geometry ------ 

I. The Primaries of the primary school 

Chapter V. 



133 
132 
132 
133 
134 
134 
134 
135 
136 
136 
136 
136 
137 
187 
138 
139 
140 
141 
142 
14S 
144 
145 



148 
149 
149 
150 
151 
151 
152 



EDUCATION OF THE SENSES. 



74. What is it? 

75 . Education of the medical senses 

a. Of the smell 

b . Of gustation 



153 
154 
155 
155 



214 

c. Thq eye 

d : The hearing and the touch 

e. The hand 

/. What Virchow could have said 

76. Education of the industrial senses 

a. The working aptitudes - - - " - 

b. Creation and conservation of types - 

c. Neuro-muscular problem 

d. It is an aggressive sense - - . - 

e. Its training . - - . _ 
/. Touch and tact . . . . 

g. Their co-p;ymnastics - - . . 

h. In practical schools - 

i. Effects of the neglect of the training of the senses 

77. Education of the hand - - - - 

a. How neglected - - - - 
h . Some truth in chiromancy 

c. How to educate the hand 

d. Both hands to be trained 

78 . a. Education of the eye - . - . 

b . The visible beautiful - - - , 

c . How it is perceived . . . . 

d. Illustration ----- 

e. Proportions and style . - . - 
/. Models ----- 

g. Home art - - - - 

h . Psycho-physiological plan 

i.j. Cannot begin too soon 

k. The line - - - - 

I. Kindergarten drawing - - . - 

m. Place of drawing in education 

n . Drawing of artists and artisans - 

79. a. Writing and reading - 

b . Two methods - - - . . 

c. Our writing - - - . . 

d. Its degradation - - - - - 
c. Its bad effects - . - - 

/. New departure - . - - - 

80. Speaking and talking - ' - 

a. The fine art of speaking - - - - 

b. Speaking attitudes - - - . 

c. Talking attitudes . . - - 

d. Family talks - - . - 

81. Language ------ 

a. Primaries of language 

b. Language from the books 

c. Language from nature 

d. By didactic apposition - . - - 

e. By simultaneous provocation 

82. Musical instruction - - - - - 

a. The piano ----- 

b. Physiological music - - - - 
e. Popular Songs - - - . 

83. Imagination ------ 

a. Learning versus perceiving - 

b . Imagination is a power - - - - 

c. Imagination to be educated - 



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d. By the old method ^ .-.-.- 177 

e. By object lessons . . - - . . . 177 

f. By the psycho-physiological method . . - - 177 
ff. Conveyance and evocation of miages ... - 178 
h. Simple illustration ------ 178 

i. Higher aims of imagination ------ 179 

J. Higher yet .---..- 180 

k. Images, ideals, idea?, realizations ----- 180 

l. Idealizing ourselves ------ 181 

Chapter VI. 

School organization ------- 183 

a . Continuity of the schools ----- 182 

b . Schools for the poor worked children - - - - 182 

c . How long they remain at school - - - - 183 

d. Their proportion of labor to schooling . - - . 183 

e. Reformatory schools - - - - - - 184 

/. ReUgious interference ------ 184 

g. Its results - - - - - - - 184 

h. Communistic schools ------ 185 

i. Schools with apprenticeship ----- 185 

Chapter VII. 

Sex in education ------- 186 

a . The first convent schools . . - - - 186 
/) . Their disintegrating influence . - - - - 186 

c. Their attractiveness ------ 187 

d. Their demoralizing effects ------ 187 

e. Morality of co-education . . - - - 188 
/. Same curriculum ------- 189 

g. Same tim.ing for both sexes . - - - - 189 

Chapter VIII. 

86. a. Sex of the teachers ------- 190 

b . Woman the educator ------ 190 

c. Their position harassed ------ 191 

d. To defend the country ------ 191 

e . The school of Pascal - - - - - - 192 

Chapter IX. 

87. The school director - - - - - - - 198 

a. Leader of the future nation ----- 193 

b. Descartes, Virchow, Paul Bert, Aristoteles - - - 193 

88. The scholar -------- 194 

89. Psycho-physiological book-keeping ----- 195 

Chapter X. 

! Conclusions. — Resume ------- 198 

Post-dedication -------- 207 



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